Mexico City, Oct. 16 - Peruvian coffee exports in August fell 23% to 440,524 (60-kilogram) bags, the producer-run Peru Coffee Board, or JNC, said Tuesday.
This compares to Peruvian exports of 573,264 bags in August 2006, a JNC official told Dow Jones Newswires by telephone from Lima.
Total exports in the first eight months of the year from Jan. 1 through August, meanwhile, fell 14% to 1,602,277 bags, compared to total exports of 1,863,287 bags in the January-August 2006, the JNC official said.
The lower export volume is in line with industry expectations for a smaller harvest this year in Peru after a bumper crop in 2006.
Physical harvesting of Peru's coffee crop starts about mid-March, some six months before the main mild washed arabica coffee crop in the rest of Latin America including Mexico and key producers in Central America.
Peru's figures for the calendar year 2007 reflect data used by many coffee analysts for the 2007-08 crop year.
Peru has become an increasingly important producer of high-quality washed arabica coffee in recent years, raising annual production significantly from about 1.7 million bags in the mid-1990s to some 3.0 million bags currently.
It competes with Honduras to be the fourth-largest producer of washed arabica beans in Latin America after Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala.