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The Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) was launched officially on April 4, 2008 in the presence of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. A national forum on ECX was held from April 4-5, 2008 at the UNECA’s Africa Hall.

The forum discussed the environment in which the ECX will operate, including the role of the newly established regulatory body, the roles and vision of the exchange market actors and the national exchange actors association that is being formed.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on his opening remarks at the ceremony that a commodity exchange system enables and customers to be confident in quality, price and delivery and payment of commodity and he added that the system will bring about transparency, efficiency in market, quality in production, and enhance productivity.

“The purpose of this national forum over the next two days is to bring together all stakeholders producers, cooperatives, domestic traders, exporters, processors, industrial buyers, financial sector, transport sector, insurance sector, information and communication technology sector, policymakers, donors, NGOs, academics, and others- in order to present and discuss the design and operational systems of the Exchange,” Dr. Eleni Zewde Gebremedhine, CEO of ECX, said on her speech.

Eleni added that, the goal is that all may understand as well as possible how the ECX will work. “This involves understanding first of all the vision and objectives of the ECX and from there, the design of the ECX model, the operations of the various components of our system and also introduce the management team of our new company.

ECX currently uses the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia and Dashin Bank for its banking system and it has started the exchange with maize, wheat, haricot bean and sesame grains, but will include teff and coffee, and has prepared warehouses in Addis Ababa, Bure, Humera, Nazreth, Nekemte and Shashemene, referred to be the main centers of the market, but has plans to increase the centers to ten.

ECX has been established to revolutionize Ethiopia’s tradition bound agriculture through creating a new marketplace that serves all market actors – farmers, traders, processors, exporters and consumers.