Over a billion US Dollar commodities traded through ECX's floor in 1000 days: ECX CEO

Addis Ababa, February 8, 2011 (Addis Ababa) -

Over a billion US Dollar worth of commodities were traded through Ethiopian Commdity Exchange (ECX) floor in its 1st 1000 days of operation, ECX Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr. Eleni Gabre-Madhin said.

In an exclusive interview with ENA on Tuesday, Dr. Eleni said during ECX’s 1st one thousand days of operation, over 583,501 tons of commodities worth a billion US dollars were traded in its trading floor.

Dr. Eleni said Sir Bob Geldof rang the first trading bell April 24/ 2008 that heralded ECX’s operations, it has registered impressive results in many aspects.

She said when ECX went in to operation in 2008 the daily value of trade started very low.

‘‘The first day of trade we have traded only 200 tons but today we are trading many times over. The difference is off course very very big.’’ Dr. Eleni said.

‘‘Now we are trading 3.000 or 4,000 tons of coffee, and 3,000 or 4,000 of sesame on daily basis. Roughly around the same time of our 1,000- day in the last weeks of January we have traded a record of 5,800 tons of sesame alone… ’’

The CEO said the daily trading has increased to more than nine million US dollars.

Dr. Eleni said currently ECX has 450 members of whom 250 are full members and another 200 limited members of the exchange. She said there are 225 floors of representatives of trade unions on the floor as well.

Today ECX has more than 5,400 clients all over the country. So basically , ECX is doing many trades daily on behalf of clients all over the country numbering in thousands.