HANOI - Premiums for Vietnamese coffee declined this week as growers and exporters held back sales due to a slide in global prices under pressure from high stockpiles, traders said on Tuesday.
Premiums for robusta grade 2, 5 percent black and broken beans, fell to $20-$40 a ton to benchmark coffee futures from $35-$50 a week before, the traders said.
London's ICE March contract dropped to $1,505 a ton on Monday, the lowest level so far this year.
Vietnamese robusta in Daklak province <COFVN-DAK> declined to 33,000-33,300 dong ($1.46-$1.48) per kg from 34,100-34,500 dong last Tuesday.
At 33,000 dong the price is the lowest since November 2013, having dropped around 6 percent so far in the crop year that began on Oct. 1, compared with a 3.6 percent rise in the same period last year, Reuters data showed.
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"The price fall kept growers from rushing to pick the crop, while a lack of workers further slowed the harvest progress", said independent analyst Nguyen Quang Binh.
Slightly above half of the 2015/2016 crop has been harvested so far in the world's biggest robusta producer, slowing from a year earlier when growers had picked about 70 percent of the crop, Binh added.
The coffee crop year lasts between October and September.
Vietnam, the world's largest robusta producer, exported 96,000 tons (1.6 million 60-kg bags) of coffee in November, up 8 percent from the previous month, customs data showed on Tuesday, lower than the government's estimate of 100,000 tons.
The world's top robusta producer started the 2015/2016 crop year with stocks from the previous season at a record level of between 350,000 and 500,000 tons based on estimates by the government and traders.
A report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture attache in Vietnam projected coffee output in the 2015/16 crop year to rise 7 percent to 29.3 million bags, while exports could rise 30 percent to a record 28.72 million bags.
The Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association forecast 2015/16 exports to drop 12.7 percent to 1.1 million tons (18.3 million bags). ($1=22,530 dong)
