COLOMBIA COFFEE REVENUE SHARPLY DOWN IN JAN/FEB

  Colombia's coffee export revenue dropped
  97 mln dlrs to 233.6 mln dlrs for the first two months of the
  year against 330.9 mln dlrs in the similar period of 1986,
  central bank preliminary figures show.
      Experts attributed the fall to lower world market prices
  following the failure to re-introduce international coffee
  export quotas, but they said Colombia could compensate the drop
  with higher exports in calendar 1987.
      Coffee export revenue for 1986 was 2.33 billion dlrs,
  according to the bank.
      Jorge Cardenas, manager of the National Coffee Growers'
  Federation, last week estimated the recent drop of 30 cents a
  lb in coffee prices would mean a net loss revenue of 457 mln
  dlrs for Colombia.
      But he stressed that Colombia, with stockpiles of 10 mln
  (60-kg) bags, had the capacity to export more and would use a
  recently-introduced more flexible marketing policy to do so.
  

