Papua New Guinea plans to strengthen the Coffee Industry Corporation Limited to better serve the country’s most iconic smallholder crop. Speaking to the Post-Courier, chief executive Charles Dambui said the corporation needs more resources and more extension officers in every district, and ideally in every local-level government area in coffee-growing provinces, to give farmers practical advice that lifts quality and yields. With coffee underpinning incomes for thousands of families, officials say a stronger corporation is critical to deliver the National Agriculture Sector Plan’s longer-range ambition of more than three million bags annually and over K10 billion in export revenue.
The strategy has three pillars. First, people. Recruit and deploy extension staff so growers receive regular training on husbandry, processing and market requirements. Second, information. Build a farmer database to target inputs, to track disease and to coordinate logistics. Third, enforcement. Use the corporation’s regulatory powers to improve quality and to maintain fair practices so premiums are passed through to growers. This direction aligns with the 2025 commodity backdrop, where high arabica prices have rewarded quality improvements and encouraged replanting in the Highlands. Source: Post-Courier.
Papua New Guinea’s coffee story is overwhelmingly an MSME story. Smallholders dominate production and cash incomes are sensitive to road access, cherry-to-parchment conversion and timely payment. The corporation argues that better resourcing, from operational budgets to vehicles for extension, would speed the shift from opportunistic selling to standards-driven, quality-differentiated exports. “Strengthening CIC’s work is important to help farmers increase production and earn more income,” Dambui told the paper, adding that enforcement and data are as important as agronomy in meeting long-term targets.
In 2023 Papua New Guinea exported 963,074 sixty-kilogram bags of green coffee, earning K803.4 million, according to the Post-Courier. CIC said this was fourteen per cent higher than 2022 and twenty-nine per cent above 2021. Exports in 2022 totalled 848,360 bags, reported the Post-Courier. For 2021, World Integrated Trade Solution records 40,742,100 kilograms, equal to about 679,000 sixty-kilogram bags.
