The story of Vietnam's coffee exporters

It is reported that in relatively conservative Vietnam, few people are willing to talk about financial issues, with coffee exporter Nguyen Chun Ping as a minority exception. His company owes $28 million (RMB 200) in loans to seven banks at an interest rate of 20%, and since the company has little extra cash, he can only use a stock of coffee beans that can fill 170 million pickup trucks as collateral.

It is reported that Vietnam is expected to have a bumper coffee harvest from 2013 to 2014, and according to a Reuters survey, Vietnamese coffee exports are expected to reach 17 million to 29.5 million packets (60kg each), which clearly exacerbates the problem of oversupply. put more pressure on coffee prices, which have fallen by 10 per cent since October 2012.

In response, the Vietnamese government expects that with the exception of a few companies such as Intimex Group, Vietnam's largest coffee exporter, which can benefit from a bumper harvest, it is good for most exporters to survive.

And many foreign coffee manufacturers said that Vietnamese exporters are actually "digging their own grave." as early as in early 2011, Robusta coffee futures peaked at $2600 (about 16000 yuan) per ton. Vietnamese coffee exporters swarmed with loans to make a lot of money, but now the price has fallen to less than $2000 per ton (about 12000 yuan). In addition, some unscrupulous middlemen sold poor weight or mixed coffee beans to exporters, which was also a cause of the crisis.

It is reported that to help this agricultural export project, which has made a huge contribution to foreign exchange, the Vietnamese government extended the repayment period of coffee from 12 months to 36 months in 2012, but the move is seen as helping the struggling banking system.

In response, bankers said that they did not impose restrictions on coffee makers to apply for loans, but privately admitted that banks were actually reluctant to lend.

Indonesia, the world's second-largest producer of Robusta coffee beans, and Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer, are expected to be the first to benefit from the Vietnamese coffee crisis, according to estimates.