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Coffee prices declined by 28.9 per cent in the last nine weeks, a situation aggravated by local and global shocks.

A market report by the Nairobi Coffee Exchange (NCE) secretariat stated that average price decreased to $245.45 (Sh27,981.30) this week compared to $345.54 (Sh39,391.56) registered on Sale 11 conducted on January 5, 2022.

This week’s auction (Sale 20), the value of coffee traded recorded a slight decrease to $8.9 million (Sh1.019 billion) compared to $9.4 million (Sh1.071billion) recorded on Sale 11.

“Maximum price equally decreased 12.5 per cent during the same period to $397 (Sh45,258) compared to $454 (Sh51,756) for a 50 kilo bag of clean coffee, “NCE said. However, volume traded increased to 1.8 million kgs from 1.3 million kgs recorded during the January 5 auction period.

But despite the price decrease in the last two months, coffee earnings increased by 63.81 per cent to Sh14.8 billion for the one year ended February, 2022.

NCE attributed the improvement to destabilisation of the major coffee industry segments globally leading to high demand for the clean beans.

The earnings improved from Sh9 billion in February 2021, a situation also characterised by increase in volumes as well as average prices.