Auctioned Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) seats have attracted a record high price of 2.8 million Birr for 1 seat. The auction was for 5 seats, 19th to 23rd, and the bid was opened on Wednesday, June 8, 2016 in Ethiopia.

ECX currently has 348 members of which 18 have already sold their membership seats thus far. 7 years ago the members acquired the seats for 50,000 Birr. However, the price has increased throughout these years and an auction held the previous year the 17th seat was sold for 1.6 million while 18th seat was worth 1.9 million Birr.

According Ermias Eshetu, CEO of the ECX, the price hike is attributable to the progressions the Exchange carried out this year.

A year ago in July, ECX launched an online trading platform. The Exchange also invested close to 4 million USD for the implementation and launching of the trading platform. Now with the new platform, ECX has the capacity to handle up to 100,000 transaction at a time.

According to Fortune 54 bid documents of the latest bid were purchased by interested people. However, it was only 13 of them that submitted their documents.

Source: Fortune