(Bloomberg) -- Coffee output in India, Asia's third-largest producer, is estimated to climb to a record high this year, the state-run Coffee Board said.
Production may increase 12 percent to 350,400 metric tons in 2017-18 from a year earlier, the board said in an emailed statement on Tuesday. The figure includes 103,100 tons of arabica and 247,300 tons of the robusta variety, it said.
The rise in the estimate is mainly due to the officials surveying new areas under the crop in traditional growing regions, the board said, without elaborating.
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“This post blossom estimations were made” in May and “crop losses, if any, after May 2017 will be taken into account at the time of post monsoon estimation,” it said.
The government's prediction compares with an estimate of 300,000 tons output in the year that started on Oct. 1, made by A.L.R.M. Nagappan, chairman of the coffee committee at the United Planters' Association of Southern India, in August. Nagappan saw production falling to an eight-year low on prolonged dry weather in key growing areas.
India's four-month rainy period, which accounts for more than 70 percent of the country's annual precipitation, missed a normal rain forecast this year. Showers totaled 841.3 millimeters -- or 95 percent of the 50-year average -- in the season, according to the India Meteorological Department. A monsoon is defined as normal when rain is between 96 percent and 104 percent of the long-term average.
To contact the reporters on this story: Pratik Parija in New Delhi at pparija@bloomberg.net, Swansy Afonso in Mumbai at safonso2@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Phoebe Sedgman at psedgman2@bloomberg.net, Atul Prakash, Lynn Thomasson
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