With the approval by the Ministry of Trade (MoT), the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) is set to open a special window for industrial processors, The Reporter has leant.
Top officials at the ECX confirmed that the Ministry has notified them the lists of processed products to be traded via ECX for the first time. However, the officials declined to mention the product items saying that the company will officially unveil the list by next week.
Recently, ECX added two more agricultural products, Soybeans and Chickpeas, to its trading floor bringing its total number of commodities traded to 10.
Accordingly, this total number of commodities to be traded on its floor will increase after next week with the expected announcement of the items, The Reporter has learnt.
According to official sources, the trading agent is intensifying its efforts to attract more market access for various agro-processors. Accordingly, products that pass through the ECX trade route are also exported on time, helping the nation gain more foreign currency.
In Ethiopia, 3.5 million small-scale farmers sell their produce through the ECX.
In addition, ECX has recently unveiled more plans that would pave the way for integrating intra-continental trading. The recent Africa Free Trade Agreement, regional economic integration and other multi-lateral economic agreements are unexploited opportunities to establish bilateral and multilateral agreements with each other in order to facilitate a modern agricultural and industrial commodity trading system. This, ECX observes, in turn will create more market access to African farmers and companies to trade with each other.
The Exchange further noted Ghana, Tanzania, Rwanda, and other Exchanges have been established after seeing the experience of the ECX, with the ECX serving as the center of excellence for African Commodity Exchanges.
The ECX stated that it is striving to establish its own ECX Academy in the present fiscal year, to conduct well designed and tailored trainings, further noting that it expects local traders, baristas, cuppers; as well as the staff of the African Exchange to exploit the opportunity provided by the academy. Chairwoman of the Mozambique Commodity Exchange, for one, has expressed her interest in sending technical staff from the Mozambique Commodity Exchange to ECX for in-depth trainings.
