Bigger budget brews brighter business for coffee bean farmers

Freshly brewed coffee.

- JASPER EMMANUEL ARCALAS

Three words, but you can "instantly" smell the aroma waking up every inch of your body - and mind.

The lowly coffee has become part and parcel of our daily lives. May it be a morning fix, an afternoon delight, or an evening pour to wash out a great dinner.

It has become part of our lives that we demand and crave for it more than anything else. It is affordable. And it does its work: gives us a caffeine boost.

Just as Chit Juan, president of the Philippine Coffee Board Inc. (PCBI), says: it is the cheapest drug-a stimulant available.

Coffee even has its own inflation print. The rate of increase in the prices of coffee and coffee substitutes stood at two percent in February.

But the coffee industry - just like us drinkers - has been longing for a boost.

In the late 1880s, the Philippines was recognized as the fourth largest coffee exporter, boasting a peak production of over 80,000 metric tons (MT) of green coffee beans.

Today, production level has dropped to an average of 30,000 MT in the past six years.

In the past two decades, the industry has been surviving, albeit thriving, on its own thanks to private sector investments.

State support remains miniscule to revive what was once a glorious agricultural subsector of the country.

But that could change soon.

Unlocking idle funds

Industry stakeholders have lobbied to the Department of Agriculture (DA) the use of collected special safeguard duties (SSG) from imported coffee products to bankroll programs for the development of the local coffee industry.

The SSG is a trade remedy imposed by countries on imported products whose prices fall below an established trigger price to protect domestic industries injured by increased imports.

The additional duty is computed using a formula based on the difference between the imported products' value and the trigger price.