Sunday, November 3, 2024

Sesame rise continues

The price of sesame seeds continues its hike in April according to reports from the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) indicated. The average price has also increased by a record 35 percent compared with a similar period last year.
According to the monthly report of ECX, in April 19,436 tons of sesame seeds were traded for a total transaction price of 1.03 billion birr, while 70 percent of the volume and 72 percent of the value was secured from the seeds from the product of Hummera/Gonder type.
The report indicated that the product has also reduced by 26 percent and 19 percent of volume and value respectively, the price has been shooting up compared with a performance a month ago.
During the stated period even though the volume and value of the product has been reduced the price has been boosted by 11 percent compared with the trading in March. The seed price in March 2019 has increased by 12.04 percent compared with March 2018.
Comparing with a similar period of April 2018 and this April volume and value of sesame seeds has increased by 81 percent and 140 percent respectively. The figure indicates that both the traded volume and particularly the price registered sharp increase compared with a year ago. The report has also added that the average price of sesame seeds has increased by 35 percent compared with April 2018.
In February the price of sesame seeds has gone up by 12.9 percent compared with the preceding month.
The trend indicates that the increase in April compared with the same period in the preceding year is much higher that the performance of the previous two months.
In the past couple of weeks the price of sesame seeds has gone up daily on the trading floor that is concerning several actors in the sector, who expressed their confusion that the price at the local market escalated with no change on the international market.
On Friday May 3 the trading hit a new record at 7,277 birr per quintal at the floor, while the maximum international price that signed in Ethiopia did not exceed USD 1,700 per ton.
Experts in the sector stated that the total cost of the seeds including FOB Djibouti reach at USD 2,655 that clearly indicate how the trading is managed on huge loss.
On this week the price has shown some decrement compared last week, while it is still the highest compared with international market.
According to the trading information held on May 8 the maximum price of the seeds was 6,643 birr per quintal.
In the past year the trading floor has also traded washed, unwashed and specialty coffee bean for export market besides the local consumption. According to ECX, over 19 thousand ton of unwashed coffee has been traded at the value of one billion birr; the washed bean volume was 1,045 tons, which targets the export market.
There were 19,004 tons of soybeans, and the recently included product that has risen significantly since it came in terms of value and volume, traded on the floor. It has changed by 11 percent and 5.5 percent in volume and value. 3,888 tons of white pea beans has been traded at a cost of 73.6 million birr.

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