The adding of a new commodity to the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) in its trading floor is expected to boost the production of beans and the corresponding market.
The electronic trading platform announced that it is going to start the trading of yellow unspeckled beans, which is the third for the budget year alone for exclusive trading at ECX.
In the past couple of years the trend has shown that when new commodities start trading at the modern trading scheme, the production, value, quality or export starts to climb.
Netsanet Tesfaye, Public Relation Head at ECX, said the experience indicated that when products started trading at ECX the harvest, quality and price increased. He reminded that the soybean and mung beans production have shown price spike since they joined the electronic trading floor.
When mung beans started under exclusive trading at ECX the production was mainly concentrated at the central part of the country, but it went on to immediately spread in other parts of the country mainly at the north western and western part of the country.
“In the 2016/17 harvest season, the production of soybean was 812, 000 quintal which has now boosted to 1.3 million quintals in past year. Starting the trading of the industrial bean at ECX is one of the major factors for the production increment,” Netsanet stated illustrating the figures on the soybean sector, which is now mainly traded for local agro processing industries with competitive price that benefited the farmers.
Latest information indicated that the production of soybean has surpassed two million quintal.
“Now local edible oil pressers are giving better price for the farmer than export value for soybean farmers, which encourages the producers to come up with high yield and better quality,” he added.
“Definitely, the production and value of yellow unspeckled beans, which is the family of pinto beans, will increase,” he told Capital.
The exchange stated on Thursday April 8, that it has already received 1,000 quintal of yellow unspeckled beans via its Bule Horra branch, which is a recently opened facility with a warehouse holding capacity of 150,000 quintal. Netsanet said that the product will also be coming at the warehouse of ECX at Wolayta Sodo.
ECX indicated that more stock will be added in the coming days. Due to that it called traders to be ready for the trading that will be commenced in the near future.
The yellow unspeckled bean is one of the most accepted pulses in the global market, mainly in South East Asia. So far it is mainly produced in the southern and south western parts of Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s pinto beans export volume in the 2018/19 budget year was 2,981 metric tons which has since then expanded to 7,801 metric tons in the 2019/20 export year.
Netsanet said that there are seven beans under the pinto beans family that includes black unspeckled beans and creamy unspeckled beans.
He added that mostly the beans are produced in southern part of the country of which the warehouses at Bule Hora, Wolayta Sodo and Hawassa mainly receive the product. He said that the products have demand at the export market. The beans production has increased from time to time since it has received attention by Ethiopian Institute of Agriculture Research.
Ethiopian pinto beans export main destination include; India, Pakistan, Kenya and Tanzania.
ECX that manages the trading of over 700,000 metric tons of commodities every year is trading about 13 products. Recently, it added the trading of red speckled beans/pinto beans and white pigeon pea.
New commodity entrance to spike productivity
Ethio telecom aggressively upgrading its service
Ethio telecom is aggressively upgrading its service all over the country making it the most vibrant company in the country. Despite the process of privatization the sole telecom provider is advancing its service in different parts of the country.
This time the company yet again launched its 4G LTE Advanced service in its East East Region on Thursday April 8. The East East Region includes Jigjiga, Qabridahar, Godey, Fiiq and Iyo wardheer towns.
The series of expansions have been based on where the company has noted high mobile data traffic and surge in demand. “The service covers areas with a high demand for speedy internet,” said Frehiwot Tamiru, CEO of Ethio telecom during the launching ceremony held at Sahal Hotel, in Jigjiga.
LTE Advanced mobile service is one of the latest mobile technologies providing reliable connections enriching customers’ experience with exceptional speed to download or upload large-sized data, high-definition (HD) multimedia, live streaming and video conferencing in real-time.
The new expansion will enable and empower customers to digitize their services, increase productivity and improve their experiences.
Speaking about the expansion of the new project at the launching ceremony Frehiwot said, “It opens a new chapter and brings an immediate impact on congested areas of telecom service.”
The project is one of ethio telecom’s three-year growth strategies, including data traffic growth, and demand-based 4G/LTE expansion around the country.
Ethio telecom’s internet penetration rate has also surpassed the overall sub-Saharan countries’ operators. The current mobile penetration in Ethiopia is over 51 percent while it is 45 percent in sub-Sahara Africa.
The project is completed within one month by Huawei on 56 LTE sites. ‘We worked together with our strategic partner Huawei and finished the difficult task to deploy the 4G LTE advanced in East East region.” Firehiwot said.
Chen Mingliang, CEO of Huawei Technologies Ethiopia during the event said that his team worked hard to achieve this. “Our delivery teams worked day and night to meet the target. Regardless of all the challenges, we are proud and over joyed to bring you the best LTE advanced service,” he expressed.
In the coming week, Ethio telecom has also a plan to launch similar services in South South West Region.
Currently, at least 769 new sites are under development. Furthermore, Frehiwot said that over 103 cities are earmarked under the company’s program to enjoy 4G/LTE advanced telecom services.
The company has 52.7 million mobile subscribers and a geographic coverage of 85.4 percent at a national level.
The telecom provider, which aspires to become a preferred telecom operator among customers and partners in Ethiopia, also declared revenues of 25.5 billion birr in the first half of the current Ethiopian fiscal year, achieving 95 percent of its target.
The revenue marks a 12.3 percent increase compared to the same period last year.
During this period, a regulation enactment was also witnessed from the Council of Ministers that incorporated changes such as; the authorized capital increased to 400 billion birr from 40 billion birr, the go ahead to engage in Mobile Money and related digital finance services, permission to engage in other related activities including forming an entity and further gives the right to invest on equities locally and at international level.
On matters valuation, the company’s Asset valuation work has also been completed and total asset value has increased by 42% using IFRS reporting standards.
Ethiopia’s consumer price to drop, forecasts IMF
The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) World Economic Outlook (WEO) forecasts Ethiopia’s consumer price would drop to a single digit.
IMF forecasts Ethiopia’s real GDP growth will go up to 8.7 percent by 2022, while its projection for 2021 is two percent which was stated as 6.1 percent in 2020. According to the IMF estimation, the country GDP growth will stand at 8 percent by 2026.
The movement of consumer price estimation is 13.1 percent for this year and 8 percent by 2022 that was 20.4 percent in 2020.
It has projected that the deficit of current account balance is to be narrowed to 3.6 percent in 2021, while it would extend to 3.9 percent in next year, which was 4.6 percent for the year in 2020.
In the latest history of Ethiopia, the biggest current account balance deficit was registered in 2015 and 2016 that was 11.7 percent and 9.2 percent respectively.
IMF on its latest WEO that released on Wednesday April 6 evening highlighted that high uncertainty surrounds the global economic outlook, primarily related to the path of the pandemic.
It said that after an estimated contraction of negative 3.3 percent in 2020, the global economy is projected to grow at 6 percent in 2021, moderating to 4.4 percent in 2022.
“The contraction for 2020 is 1.1 percentage points smaller than projected in the October 2020 WEO, reflecting the higher-than-expected growth outturns in the second half of the year for most regions after lockdowns were eased and as economies adapted to new ways of working,” it added.
Partnership signed between Total Ethiopia, Bruh Entertainments for the distribution of CANAL+
A partnership agreement between TOTAL Ethiopia S.C and Bruh Entertainments PLC, the distributor of CANAL+ was signed on Tuesday April 6 at Hyatt Regency Hotel. The partnership agreement is signed by Thibault Lesueur, Managing Director of Total Ethiopia and Tewodros Abraham, CEO of Bruh Entertainments PLC.
The partnership will provide an access to CANAL+ offers in the point-of-sale booths inside TOTAL Service Stations in Addis Ababa and upcountry for product sales and marketing activities.
This partnership will substantially enhance customers’ convenience to buy CANAL+ products and services. In addition to Fuel and Lubricants, TOTAL Ethiopia continues developing its value-added services to its customers through different diversified activities including Café, Restaurant, Car Wash, ATM and Tire Services.
TOTAL believes that this partnership demonstrates its strategy to provide one-stop services closer to its customers.
