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Ethiopia - ECX opens more warehouses, partners with Abyssinia

By Addis Mulugeta

Capital

The Ethiopian commodity exchange (ECX) is devising a proposal for agriculture training centres to disseminate trading and exchange programs to coffee and green crop farmers.
Eleni Zaud Gebre Medhin (PHD) told Capital the institutions have already promised to include details of ECX's program and how it is working in their curriculum for the diploma program.

In addition, the course hopefully will be provided to those development agents (DA) and agricultural extension workers to understand what it is and easily disseminate the program and system of ECX.

"In return, ECX benefits from it and can easily stretch its program and create awareness deep into the grass root level," said Dr. Eleni.

ECX has also opened two new warehouses in Hummera and Metema, in the northern part of the country to encourage and support sesame suppliers and exporters. A crew from ECX is scheduled to visit the area next week and is expected to discuss with both the suppliers and exporters.

In related news, on March 24 ECX signed an agreement with Bank of Abyssinia (BoA) to enable the bank to be one of the exchange's settlement banks.

Chanyalew Yilma, President of BoA, during the signing ceremony pledged his bank's commitment to providing superior services. After signing the agreement with ECX, the final step for the bank is to be recognized by the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange Authority (ECEA) as a clearing institution, after which it will be fully operational. The signing of ECX with the Bank of Abyssinia raises the total number of ECX partner banks to seven.
The recently introduced exchange is the first of its kind in Africa. The vision of ECX is to revolutionise Ethiopia's tradition-bound agriculture through a new marketplace that serves all market actors, from farmers to traders to possessor to exporters to customers.