The Ortega administration rejected the request of Nicaraguan coffee growers, who requested that the tax of one dollar per quintal exported be waived for the 2020-2021 harvest.
The decision to start charging from next year was published by the Ministry of Development, Industry and Commerce (Mific) in the October 15, 2019 edition of La Gaceta.
The funds collected from the producers will be managed by the National Commission for the Transformation and Development of Coffee Culture (Conatradec), as stipulated in the Law for the Transformation and Development of Coffee Culture, which was amended in August 2019.
In October and November last year, gold grain exports from Nicaragua totaled $13 million, 60% less than what was sold in the same months of 2017.
Figures from the Export Processing Center (Cetrex) detail that in the first two months of 2018-2019 harvest, the country sold abroad 103,380 quintals of gold grain, 58% less than the 248,808 quintals exported in the same period of the 2017-2018 harvest.
In the first eight months of the year the country generated $381 million from exports of the grain, 14% less than the $445 million reported in the same period in 2017.
According to figures from the Export Procedures Center (Cetrex), a decrease was also reported in relation to the volume exported for the period from January to August of this year, compared to the first eight months of 2017, in this case a drop of 3%.
On top of an international context with low prices, coffee producers in Nicaragua also have to deal with the complications arising from the sociopolitical crisis and a lack of financing options.
As if coffee production's current position in the unfavorable context of low international prices was not enough of a problem for coffee farmers, in Nicaragua they are facing yet other disadvantages, which only complicate the sector's prospects further.
For the Nicaraguan coffee sector, the difficulty in obtaining workers has worsened, especially in areas such as Nueva Segovia and Matagalpa.
The coffee trade union affirms that in the 2016-2017 cycle approximately 200 thousand hundredweight were lost, and in what has occurred so far of the 2017-2018 harvest, part of the production has also been lost.Entrepreneurs in the sector argue that, in both cases, it is due to a lack of grain cutters.
It has been noted that lack of a national policy for development of the sector in the long term has prevented more than 2 million hundredweight from being produced on average every year since 2000.
Production has stagnated, with figures close to two million hundredweight for the past three years, surpassed by Guatemala and Honduras, with production levels 4 and 6 million respectively.