COSTA RICA OPTIMISTIC ABOUT REFORMING ICO Costa Rica's economy minister said he sees new hope for winning changes in the International Coffee Organisation system of export quotas. Minister Luis Diego Escalante, who serves as president of the Costa Rican Coffee Institute, said he was hopeful because of the support offered Costa Rica and other smaller producing- nations by such major consumers as the United States, Britain and the Netherlands at last week's ICO meeting in london. Escalante told a news conference here he "carried the weight of the negotiations" at the meeting by calling for larger export quotas for the smaller coffee-growing nations. Costa rica is insisting, Escalante said, on a new quota system based on a producing nation's real export capacity, once it has satisfied internal demand. "There are countries such as our own whose sales possibilities are close to or above 100 pct of their current quotas," Escalante said. At the same time, there are countries favoured by the current system that have been assigned quotas far above their export potential, he said. The current ICO quota system is "unfair and autocratic," Escalante said. Escalante attributed the nosedive in international coffee prices over the last week to speculation rather than real matters of supply and demand. "Be careful," he warned, "there's not as much coffee in the world as they say. What there is are bags of sawdust."