2merkato

The latest report by the United States Department of Agriculture puts Ethiopia as the world’s 6th largest coffee producer for the 2010/2011 crop year.

According to the report, Ethiopia has produced about 4,400 bags of coffee (264,000 kg).

The top five coffee producing countries in the list are Brazil (54,500 bags), Vietnam (18,725 bags), Colombia (9,500 bags), Indonesia (9,325 bags) and India (5,100 bags).  

Ethiopia is followed by Honduras (4,000 bags), Peru (4,000 bags), Guatemala (3,910 bags) and Mexico (3,700bags).

The awards will honour 100 organisations in east Africa.

Ethiopia has joined the yearly CIO 100 awards as one of the five participating countrie sin east Africa.

The number of companies to be surveyed for the competition this year has increased to more than 500 up from 350 in last year.

Last year's 350 participants were drawn from Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.

Ethiopia earned over 104.1 million dollars from the export of leather, 73 percent less than its target of 180.4 million dollars for the last fiscal year, the Ethiopian Leather Industry Development Institute (LIDI) said.

The exports revenue came from 43 leather and leather products factories which include 22 tanneries, 15 leather footwear firms, and six leather enterprises, which exported their products to the United States and countries in Africa, Asia and Europe.

The government of Ethiopia lifted the price cap on cotton on 15 August 2011 following the decline of prices in the international market.

For three months from November 2010, the price of a kilogramme of cotton was fixed at 42.78 Br a kilo. At the same time, the government had also banned exporting cotton when demand by local textile factories increased and prices in the international market soared.