The Economic Section is responsible for disseminating knowledge and fostering market transparency through detailed analysis of relevant aspects of the coffee sector and the preparation of the ICO annual flagship report, the Coffee Development Report on the Organization’s annual focus theme.

Furthermore, it engages with academia and other coffee-related research groups to carry out economic studies and reports covering topics such as coffee price and volatility, quality and safety, risk management and the effects of tariffs on the coffee trade.

It provides inputs to media and responds to external enquiries and ICO Members through analytics on emerging issues in the global coffee sector, together with the socioeconomic aspects of coffee production and impacts of agricultural, trade and industrial policies.

The Section also prepares country coffee profiles to improve the visibility of individual ICO Members in the world coffee economy. In addition, the section contributes to the Operation’s Division function of design, funds mobilisation, supervision, monitoring and evaluation of coffee sector development projects, benefitting Member countries and their farming communities.

The Statistics Section is the custodian of world coffee statistics, with its comprehensive data on exports, imports, market prices, prices to growers, production, stocks and inventories of coffee, among others, going back to 1963.

The inter-governmental status of the Organization confers upon the Statistics Section a position of neutrality and transparency on its data collection, while the Certificate of Origin offers unparalleled quality.

The value of its unique database is recognized by market analysts, researchers and academics from around the world, who frequently consult these data to formulate their technical papers, econometric models and studies of the coffee market.

Now, the coffee data of the Statistics Section is accessible via the World Coffee Statistics Database.

The Statistics Section is also responsible for the ICO Composite Indicator Price (I-CIP).  It provides an overall benchmark for the price of green coffee of all major origins and type, considered to be the best available measure of levels of green coffee transactions on a global basis.

Coffee authorities make particular use of ICO group indicator prices for payments to farmers in coffee producing countries, and the I-CIP data series is widely used by commodity experts in government trade departments around the world to prepare their coffee statistical reports.