A new market information system, which will provide market-related data to farmers, was developed by the Ministry of Trade & Industry at a cost of four million dollars.

The National Market Information System is expected to be operational this month. It will provide market price information on teff, wheat, sesame, haricot beans and corn to farmers, traders and consumers through short  message system or interactive voice response (IVR) call, a technology that allows a computer to interact with humans through the use of voice.

The five commodities were chosen because of their wide consumption and economic importance, according to Yibeltal Assefa (PhD), trade information management centre director at the Ministry of Trade & Industry.

“Many intermediaries and brokers have been taking advantage of farmers due to their lack of knowledge about the market value of their produce,” he adds. “The system will also help buyers and traders make good decisions by allowing them to see which regions offer the lowest prices.”

Research and design of the system began two years ago at the Ministry, with technical assistance from the Agricultural Transformation Agency. Installation of the system, which took five months, was awarded to the decade-old eCom Technology last April through a tender process.

“We are only waiting for Ethio telecom to provide us with a hotline number for launch,” said Mesay Zegeye, chief technology officer of eCom.

The system will require data to be fed into it from each of the marketplaces, which will be assigned two data encoders. New data entries will be validated at the Ministry by correlating them to international prices, previous entries and the prices collected from other markets.

“We have observed that it’s on Saturdays between 10:00am and 2:00pm that transactions peak,” said Yibeltal. “At which time the information is recorded.”