With the main goal of fighting under-invoicing, the Ethiopian Coffee & Tea Authority issued a directive that sets the daily minimum price of coffee for international trade.

A new directive issued by the Authority sets the daily minimum price of coffee for exporters who sell the commodity to international buyers. The directive, which has been in the making for close to three months, came into effect at the end of February. It followed another directive that was issued by the Ministry of Trade & Industry on the export commodities purchase contract system at the end of October.

On a daily basis, a team at the Authority compares the international and local prices of coffee and uses a weighted average method to set the minimum prices for export. The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) reports the daily registered coffee contracts to the team at 5:00pm every day. Then the team scrutinises the contract volumes and prices, issues the next day's minimum price and notifies the exporters and their associations around 9:00pm.

There are a lot of exporters who sell coffee at a lower price in the international market, according to Adugna Debela (PhD), director-general of the Authority.

"They even sell it at a lower price than the price they paid to the farmers," he said. “Hence the directive was necessary in order to mitigate the issue."

Even though the volume of coffee production has been increasing, the foreign currency generated from its export has been decreasing and also the value of the coffee is losing face in the international market, according to Adugna.

On the first day after the directive was enacted, 53 contracts were registered, which is lower than the average daily contracts registered on normal days.

"Five days before the enforcement of the law, there were a total of 70 contracts registered by the central bank," according to Hariu Nuru, market information and regulatory director at the Authority.