Coffee auction witnesses good offtake

Our Commodities Bureau

Bangalore, Oct 14: Coffee trading during the week had on offer 546 mt at the Indian Coffee Traders Association (ICTA) auction, which witnessed fair offtakes by domestic buyers who largely covered prime Arabica washed and Robusta Cherries. Good premium Arabica washed coffee fetched Rs 1 to 2 higher and indifferent coffees were discounted heavily. Exporters were selective and covered Robusta washed prime grades while other varieties remained more or less unchanged.

In the world scenario, New York Arabica markets hovered around the 45.5 cents plus barrier over the week without making much of a breakthrough either way. The current over supply and excess production situation is numbing the market sentiments and further reduction of prices looks inevitable. Robusta at London heavy origin and speculative selling continued to drag the market down.

COFEI to stop online trading
Hit by sharp decline in volumes of trading, Coffee Futures Exchange of India (COFEI) Limited has decided to discontinue with computer-based online trading and to revert to the outcry system for trading with immediate effect. Continuous fall in prices of coffee in the international market has blunted the enthusiasm among traders, as a result of which the volumes of trading had registered a sharp decline, causing substantial decrease in the revenue of the exchange, COFEI said.

COFEI, it said in release, found it too expensive to continue with the present system using V-Sat links under an agreement with the Bangalore Stock Exchange at BgSE, Bangalore, and at Hassan.

The board of directors at a meeting decided to revert to the outcry system for trading and to change the trading timings from 2 pm to 5 pm, the release said.

COFEI was continuously exploring the possibility of changing the trading technology to a web-based system with revenue sharing arrangement with service providers to facilitate members to trade from their own premises, it said. This was expected to materialise before the new coffee marketing commences in January 2002.