Ethiopia commodity mkt eyes expansion, futures

By Aaron Maasho

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia's commodity exchange (ECX) plans to double the agricultural items it trades to eight by next year and to introduce forward and future contracts within three years, Chief Executive Officer Eleni Gabre-Madhin told Reuters on Thursday.

The ECX was launched in mid-2008 and trades coffee, maize, sesame and white pea beans through an open cry system.

It plans to introduce sorghums, chick peas, lentils and niger seeds by expanding warehouse facilities, Gabre-Madhin said.

Africa's biggest coffee producer, Ethiopia intends to boost its agricultural output by 2015, raising coffee to 700,000 tonnes from 300,000 tonnes, under a five-year economic development plan launched in 2010.

"Part of our capacity expansion is to meet the increase in the volumes of the commodities we already have, and also to increase the number of items traded," Eleni told Reuters in an interview.

"Our idea is to introduce three to five new commodities each year for the next four years," she said.

The exchange is planning to quadruple its capacity of 200,000 tonnes in its 16 warehouses throughout Ethiopia, but a dearth in modern storage facilities could hamper expansion, Eleni said.

"We have been doubling volume of trade every year for the last three years, but we now feel like we are reaching the constraint of the storage infrastructure," Eleni said.