Minister Threatens to Blacklist Traders Who Break Export Deals

Aug 18 , 2026. By BEZAWIT HULUAGER ( FORTUNE STAFF WRITER )

Kassahun Gofe (PhD), minister of Trade & Regional Integration(MoTRI), is preparing his toughest response yet to exporters and foreign buyers who abandon signed contracts, after complaints reached a record 47 in the 2025/26 budget year. The plan would blacklist repeat foreign defaulters from trading with Ethiopia for a year, suspend offending exporters’ registration and permits for three months, and strip repeat local offenders of their trade licences.

Kassahun Gofe (PhD), minister of Trade & Regional Integration (MoTRI), is preparing his toughest response yet to exporters and foreign buyers who walk away from signed contracts, after complaints reached a record 47 in the 2025/26 budget year.

The plan would blacklist repeat foreign defaulters from trading with Ethiopia for a year and suspend the registration and permits of offending exporters from Ethiopia for three months. The ministry threatened to strip repeat local offenders of their trade licences.

The shift marks the end of a long dependence on quiet mediation. According to federal trade officials, the scale of the defaults now threatens the country's name in the very markets it is trying to sell into.

“The occurrence of contract non-performance is having an extremely high negative impact on our national image," said Tsegaw Chernet, an adviser to the State Minister for Trade. “The problem had outgrown the government's usual tools.”

According to him, the 2025/26 budget year cannot be compared to any other year.

The longer record shows how persistent the trouble has become. An analysis of the 12 years beginning in 2013/14, conducted by the Ministry, recorded 279 complaints over export contract performance, with exporters from Ethiopia accounting for 154 (55.2pc), while foreign buyers accounted for the balance.

The single most common cause, on the Ethiopian side, was higher domestic purchase prices set against weaker international selling prices. For coffee, exporters took full or partial advance payments and then failed to deliver.

The catalogue of failures runs wider, with some exporters failing to meet agreed quality standards, shipping late, or submitting incomplete paperwork. Others diverted contracted goods to better-paying buyers, and a few vanished with the advance, with no delivery made.

Foreign buyers, too, refused shipments after contracts were signed and letters of credit opened. At times, with the cargo already at the destination port, they opened their letters of credit late, demanded price cuts when world prices fell, raised compensation claims over alleged quality faults, or paid late.

The disputes clustered in agricultural commodities, such as sesame, mung beans, soybeans, mash, chickpeas and livestock. Coffee, meat, spices and enset also caught up, according to the Ministry.

The complaints filed this year were split almost evenly, with 23 involving Ethiopian businesses and 24 foreign buyers. Among the Ethiopian cases, 18 concerned exports and five imports. Among the foreign ones, 23 concerned exports and one an import.

“We spent the past year drowning in contract defaults,” said Tsegaw, who spoke at a workshop on export-default prevention and quality-assurance compliance, held at the Capital Hotel on August 13, 2026, by the Ethiopian Pulses & Oilseeds Exporters Association (EPOSEA) in partnership with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

The Ministry concludes that periodic mediation can no longer keep pace. It wants a permanent mechanism resting on a legal framework.

"Solving the problem through periodic mediation isn’t a lasting solution,” said Tsegaw. “We need a structural mechanism to create a reliable trade environment.”

The proposed system would establish a standard procedure for monitoring contract performance. A database would organise records of defaults, with the responsible unit elevated to a dedicated section staffed by legal and contract specialists.

Foreign buyers who repeatedly breach would be placed on a blacklist shared with exporters and barred from trading with Ethiopia for a year. Exporters from Ethiopia found at fault could lose their registration and export permits for three months, with repeat offenders losing their licences. Wronged parties are free to seek compensation under civil law.

Federal Trade officials also intend to lean on embassies and foreign-affairs channels to pursue defaulting buyers abroad, referring cases involving criminal conduct or foreign-currency debt owed to the country to prosecutors. Before any of that, they want more rigorous vetting of buyers, while Tsegaw urged exporters to look beyond the documents on the table and check who they are dealing with.

According to Tsegaw, verification is the cheapest safeguard the plan offers

The enforcement drive arrives as the federal government presses for more export earnings and the hard currency they bring. Ethiopia earned more than 11.2 billion dollars from exports in 2025/26, 119.14pc of its initial target, according to Minister Kassahun Gofe (PhD). He has since set a target of 13.4 billion dollars for 2026/27, an increase of nearly 20pc, announced at a consultation with exporters in Quality village on August 12, 2026.

The Minister named value addition, quality, market diversification, and digital transformation as priorities. He unveiled plans to accelerate the processing of raw commodities, tighten quality assurance, open new markets, and implement modern data systems to simplify procedures.

"We’re committed to deeply promoting Ethiopia's products in the global market,” Kassahun said.

He disclosed a plan for the Ministry to work through a newly formed “macro committee” to sort out the bottlenecks in logistics, shaky domestic supply chains, and bureaucratic delays that exporters pointed out.

A study of the livestock-export trade four years ago found small-volume traders absorbing average payment defaults of about 6,794 dollars a year, and exporters shipping at least 150 cattle annually losing about 10,833 dollars a year. Federal officials once stepped in to help recover about nine million Br from large-scale livestock exporters who had reneged.

Independent advice points the same way, towards prevention over cure.

According to Tilahun Girma, an economist by training and a partner at PKF, stronger controls are needed before disputes surface, urging exporters to verify buyers' legal identities, payment capacity, track records and banking arrangements before signing.

“Contracts should spell out prices, quantities, delivery schedules, payment terms, and dispute-resolution procedures,” Tilahun, who gave a training at the workshop, told Fortune. “Banks should vet letters of credit before any resources are committed.”

He advised keeping a single file for each transaction and treating price volatility as a contractual risk rather than a matter for informal renegotiation when the market turns. For Tilahun, the first defence against default begins before a shipment leaves, including screening the buyer, reviewing the terms, documenting every change, monitoring foreign exchange obligations, and acting on warning signs early.

PUBLISHED ON Aug 18,2026 [ VOL 27 , NO 1372]