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Showing posts from April 10, 2012

Colombia weighs raising coffee-export fee as peso firms

By Leslie Josephs The Wall Street Journal April 10, 2012 NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--The quasigovernmental agency that oversees Colombia's coffee industry is weighing an increase in a fee on exported beans amid a surge in the local currency, an official said Tuesday. The Colombian Coffee Growers Federation, known as Fedecafe, currently collects 6 U.S. cents for every pound of coffee that is exported from the Andean country, one of the world's largest producers of washed arabica beans. But a stronger peso has meant lower revenue for the agency once the fee is converted into local currency. "The [fee] readjustment would be an increase. That's the most likely [outcome]," Luis Fernando Samper, spokesman at Fedecafe, told Dow Jones Newswires in an e-mail. "Today it is 6 [US] cents per exported pound, but converted into Colombian pesos, that amount is barely half of what it was a few years ago." The peso has appreciated around 8% this year ag...