Relations between coffee world market price and retail price in Belgium

The objective of this publication is to analyze how the variations observed at the coffee world market price level pass on the coffee retail price in Belgium. This research takes place in the framework of a coffee value chain analysis. The formation of the coffee price cycles seems to fade these last years at world market as well as retail price in Belgium levels and since the previous months, these prices rise strongly due to the speculators interest for the commodities market. We observe that when the world coffee price diminishes, this reduction passes on the retail coffee price in Belgium less rapidly than for an increase and moreover, the correlation is stronger when the world price grows than during the deceasing periods. We also notice that variability of the world coffee price from 1998 to 2007, which stretches to reduce itself these latter years, is clearly superior to the Belgian coffee retail price one.