The Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) has accepted all the participants, except one, of its exclusive auction for farmers’ cooperatives seats on May 16, 2013. ECX floated the 30 seats in April 2013, reserving 12 for coffee, 10 for sesame and five for haricot supplying cooperatives, with the remaining three left open for other commodities.

The bid has attracted few participants despite the exchange has postponed the closing date of the bid to encourage more cooperatives to participate. ECX said 25 cooperatives had bought the bid document, but only 19 made offers.

The bid also attracted widely differing offers. The starting price for the bid was set at 100,000 Birr. ECX’s seats, which were auctioned at a starting price of 50,000 Birr in 2008 when the Exchange was established, reached an average of 1.35 million Birr in 2012, with the highest offer being 3.5 million Birr.

Offers for the current bid ranged from 117,300 Birr, by Tabor Farmers’ Cooperative Union, for a haricot bean seat; to 983,891.70 Br, by Burka Kaliti Farmers’ Cooperative Union for yet another coffee seat.

ECX was expecting a much higher participation of cooperatives, at least 200 offers, according to Abenet Bekele, Chief Strategy Office (CSO) of the ECX.

The number of cooperatives that are part of the ECX will now reach 33, which is nine percent of the total membership. There are a total of   505 cooperative unions in Ethiopia, according to 2011 figures.

Source: Fortune