The Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) announced that the decision for exclusive right to trade read kidney beans and green mung beans at the electronic trading floor will reduce contraband and money laundry.
Previously the government decided to trade mung beans on the modern commodity trading facility a year ago, although it was postponed for a year in response to suppliers’ request. At the same time even though suppliers who traded the beans on the floor had been conducting illegal activity which harmed the market the government allowed suppliers to optionally trade their product at ECX.
Netsanet Tesfaye, Public Relations Head at ECX, told Capital that the trading floor now has finalized every required preparation to receive the product in the coming harvest season starting next month.
He said that in addition to preparing a center point to receive the product the ECX has also improved its contract for both products. “One of the claims of the stakeholders was the contract issue that we have now improved,” he explained.
Last week, Misganu Arega, State Minister of MoTI, cautioned those who involved in the illegal trade of the products that the government will take severe action.
Netsanet said that to tackle the challenges the collaboration of stake holders like the Ministry of Revenue and National Bank of Ethiopia and the ECX is crucial and they are working strongly to smash the illegal trading of the country’s hard currency sources. The green mung bean had been traded for five years on the electronic trading floor optionally before last year when the government allowed it to trade products like coffee and sesame.
Red kidney beans will also be fully traded on the floor this coming harvest season.
On Friday the commodity trading facility announced that the exclusive trading of the two products under ECX will control the contraband activity, illegal money transaction and even improve hard currency earning, which has declined due to the expansion of contraband.
Besides that, in this harvest season niger seeds will be included as 10th commodity for optional trading at ECX. Recently ECX has announced that it will start to trade cotton in the current budget year. Including cotton is the beginning of trading industrial products onthe floor.
In August ECX has traded 25,386 tonnes of coffee, the major hard currency source of the country, more than 5,000 tones sesame seeds, 1,386 white pea bean, 7, 498 tones of the recently included soybean, 1,955 green mung bean, worth 2.42 billion birr.
The trading value of coffee takes 80 percent of the total amount.
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