What to expect from a coffee trade summit
Coffee is a major export market for China, and the country is hoping to leverage the global coffee market to its advantage in its ongoing economic slowdown.
China’s trade in the coffee trade rose by almost a third last year to $US4.5 billion, the Commerce Ministry said in its annual trade report on Wednesday.
Coffee imports accounted for nearly 60 per cent of the total value of China’s trade with the rest of the world last year.
That was up from 46 per cent in 2013, the ministry said.
China is currently struggling to contain the global recession and has been trying to diversify its economy.
Last year, the country imported about $US2.4 billion in coffee, the report said.
The world’s top three coffee exporters, India and China, account for almost half of the global total, and China is likely to be the top coffee exporter to India in the next 12 months.
The trade in coffee was valued at $US3.8 billion in 2014, a record, and that has continued to grow as the world economy has picked up in recent years, the government said.
It said it expected coffee trade to grow at a rate of 3 per cent this year, 4 per cent next year and 6 per cent annually in the foreseeable future.
The coffee trade with India was worth $US1.3 billion last year, up from $US0.9 billion in 2013.
India has grown steadily in coffee sales for the past four years, with the export of coffee now accounting for about a third of India’s total trade with Europe.
India, a member of the European Union, is the second-largest coffee exporer in the world.
China, a major coffee producer, is now a major exporter of the beverage.
China has made its mark on coffee as a major market.
Its global coffee trade grew by 17 per cent last year after declining by 9 per cent a year earlier, the China Daily reported.
China exported about $3.4 trillion in coffee in 2014.
