India is bullish about export of coffee to Russia, the country which has one of the highest growth rates of coffee consumption in the world.
"After European Union, Russia has emerged as India's second largest coffee market and has 10 per cent growth rate of coffee consumption - one of the highest in the world," Nitin R Gokarn, Secretary of the Coffee Board, here told a seminar organised by the Indian Business Alliance.
Noting a direct link between the economic growth and coffee consumption, he reminded that Russia was named along with India, China and Brazil as the fastest growing economies at the recent Davos Economic Forum.
"In 1990s India had exported about 36,000 metric tonnes of coffee annually to the ex-USSR, while today it is already exporting 33,000 metric tonnes to Russia," he said.
Pointing out that India has emerged as the sixth largest producer of coffee in the world, Gokarn recalled that in the past in some years it had exported up to 55 per cent of produce to the ex-USSR, while today Russia's share is 18-19 per cent in Indian coffee exports, which will further expand with the growth of Russian economy.
Bulk of the Indian coffee export to Russia amounts to the instant coffee imported by Nestle's Russian subsidiary, while only three thousand metric tonnes are coffee beans and with the expansion of chains of coffee parlours in the country this sector will also grow, India's Coffee Board believes.
Unlike, coffee exports to Russia, the tea sector has to radically change its philosophy, Tea Board's Moscow-based Promotion Director Sumit Jerath said at the seminar.
