Hanoi, Aug 25 - Vietnam's next coffee harvest due to start in late October could be 5 percent to 8 percent smaller than the current crop rather than the 20 percent forecast by an industry association, traders said on Tuesday.
Last Friday the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association's chairman forecast output could drop 15-20 percent in the 2009/2010 season to between 16 million and 17 million bags due to adverse weather.
But two traders in Ho Chi Minh City and another two based in the Central Highlands coffee belt disputed that, saying the volume of cherries on trees looked similar to the previous harvest thanks to favourable weather.
They said output forecasts by the state-controlled coffee association were always underestimates because industry officials wanted to create supply pressure to push up prices.
The Hanoi-based industry body previously said the 2008/09 crop produced 16 million bags. Last year it eventually revised up its estimate of 2007/2008 output by 20 percent to 18 million bags.
"The crop coming in has not changed much and we anticipated only a 5 percent drop in output," said a trader based in Daklak, Vietnam's largest coffee-growing province.
He forecast Daklak would produce around 400,000 tonnes, or 6.7 million 60 kg bags, in the next crop year between October 2009 and September 2010, similar to the previous harvest that ended in January.
Another trader in Lam Dong province said output there would be unchanged at 320,000 tonnes, based on preliminary estimates. Lam Dong is the country's second-largest coffee growing province.
A third trader in Ho Chi Minh City said the next crop could fall to around 1.1 million tonnes, or 18.3 million bags, from 1.2 million tonnes in the 2008/2009 season.
Coffee yields often fall after a bumper crop.
A Reuters poll in January forecast output in Vietnam, the world's second-largest producer after Brazil, would rise to 19.5 million bags in the 2008/2009 season from 18 million the previous season.
Another poll by Reuters in July put the median forecast for the 2009/2010 crop at 19 million bags, or only 2.6 percent down from the previous crop.