India's coffee exports in the scenario of WTO: an analysis trend and structural shift

Abstract

Faced with stiff competition from major coffee growing countries like Brazil and Vietnam, Indian coffee is loosing out significantly in the global export market. The situation on the domestic front is no better. Although in the last few years the consumption of coffee has grown significantly. The annual coffee consumption has grown from 60,000 tones six years ago to 80,000 tones today, modern coffee chains account for almost 6,000?7,000 tones annually, which is almost 10% of the total consumption and domestic consumption has remained at 78% and 22%, respectively for a long time now. India's coffee growers suffered from government's restrictive attitude until economic reforms introduced in 1991. India's membership of WTO agreement also helps to increase the amount of exports of coffee. WTO agreement overriding importance of today's regional trade agreements and broad sectoral issues are influencing the behavioural patterns and equations of international trade. We divide our entire period of study into two regimes, Regime 1 (1987?1988 to 1994?1995) and Regime 2 (1995?1996 to 2005?2006) captures the effect of export of coffee in pre- and post-WTO phase. In this paper, authors make an attempt to provide a detailed analysis of the trend in India's external trade in coffee.