Indian coffee output could meet target

Mumbai : India's coffee production, the third-biggest in Asia, is more likely to meet a government target after rains revived over the biggest coffee-growing areas, helping ease last month's dry spell that had threatened to lower yields.

The state-owned Coffee Board won't reduce its June estimate of 293,000 metric tons, chairman G.V. Krishna Rau said yesterday in a telephone interview. Dry weather may cut harvest by five per cent, Ramesh Rajah, president of the All India Coffee Exporters' Association, forecast on July 22.

"Rainfall in the past 10 days has been so good that it has almost wiped out the deficit seen last month,'' N. Bose Mandanna, a plantation owner and former vice-chairman of the board, said.

A bigger harvest in India, which exports 80 per cent of its output, may weigh on robusta coffee prices, which have declined five per cent in the past month. Global production may climb by about nine per cent next season.