Participation of the Executive Director in the Annual General Assembly of IACO

23 November 2005
The Executive Director, Dr. Néstor Osorio, addressed the 45th Annual General Assembly of the Interafrican Coffee Organization in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire on 23 November 2005.

The Executive Director, Dr. Néstor Osorio, was invited to address the 45th Annual General Assembly of the InterAfrican Coffee Organization (IACO) and the 6th General Assembly of the African Coffee Research Network (ACRN) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire from 23 to 24 November 2005. This event was chaired by the Minister of Economics and Finance, Dr. Paul Antoine Bohoun Bouabré. In his opening speech Dr Osorio thanked the Members of the IACO and the Secretary-General, Mrs Josefa Correa Sacko, for their support and positive contribution to the work of the International Coffee Organization. He invited the African coffee community to invest in the improvement of quality as a means to be more competitive and to obtain better revenue, and also to make use of the Step-by-Step Guide to promote the increase of domestic consumption recently published by the ICO. Referring to the recent World Coffee Conference held in Salvador de Bahia in Brazil, he drew the attention of African stakeholders to some of the most relevant suggestions and recommendations made on this occasion. Pending the official estimates of the next crop in Brazil, Dr Osorio indicated that current fundamental factors provided reasons to believe that existing levels of prices could be maintained. At the end of his intervention he underlined the objectives and mission of the ICO as an instrument of cooperation between consumers and producers, but which was particularly geared to assist and empower coffee exporting countries.