Vietnam should encourage domestic and foreign investors to focus on producing high value-added coffee, since it is one of the country’s leading agricultural exports, according to the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association (VICOFA).

Vietnam has a total coffee cultivation area of 614,545 hectares, with 92 percent of cultivation areas located in the Central Highlands provinces. Each year, the country exports 1 million tonnes of coffee beans, generating an export turnover of more than 3.4 billion USD.

Chairman of the VICOFA Luong Van Tu said Vietnamese coffee accounted for 20 percent of the world’s total production volume. However, the country only generated 2 percent of the global coffee value, adding that each coffee producing household earned around 2 USD from the sale of one kilogramme of coffee beans.

According to the master plan for coffee development by 2030, domestic and foreign businesses will benefit from incentives to upgrade and build integrated processing plants with a capacity of more than 135,000 tonnes per year, including the production of 60,000 tonnes of instant coffee.

VICOFA suggested the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development develop a detailed plan with a focus on mechanisms and policies to develop the coffee processing network in line with cultivation areas.-VNA