BANGALORE: Seized with the threat of entirely losing the coffee markets of Russia and Italy to Vietnam, the Indian coffee industry, led by the Coffee Board, is working out strategies of checking the downslide in exports. India has lost nearly two-thirds of the Russian coffee market to Vietnam in the past few years.

Giving details of the strategies, after a meeting with coffee growers and the Coffee Board, the Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Jairam Ramesh, said on Tuesday India would work towards excluding coffee and tea from the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) list of ASEAN. "I do not see any national interest to put coffee from Vietnam on zero import duty list. It would be better to have coffee on the negative list when we finalise the FTA," he said.

Mr. Ramesh said India's four important export markets are: Russia, Italy, Yugoslavia and Japan and India would work out ways of becoming cost-competitive over there.

According to the Coffee Board Chairman, G. V. Krishna Rao, Vietnamese coffee is 50 per cent cheaper than Indian coffee. Some of the Indian companies are importing from Vietnam and re-exporting it. "However, the importance we give to exports is not for plugging dollar deficit, but job deficit."

The Board, Mr. Ramesh said, would chalk out a roadmap to increase domestic coffee consumption and the target set in the next ten years was to double the present consumption of 80,000 tonnes. Between 1990 and 2000, coffee consumption had been stagnant and only in the last five years it shot up from 60,000 tonnes to 80,000 tonnes. "This is a good sign and efforts will be on to market aggressively and branding of coffee." For this the Coffee Board is taking the assistance of a Brazilian expert — Carlos Brando — who will be here from April 24 for a week to advise on domestic marketing.

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