| Abstract: | The Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) was established in April 2008 with the objective of improving market efficiency by better linking smallholder farmers to markets, encouraging reliable trading relationships and increasing market information. In December 2008 it became mandatory to trade all coffee through the ECX. However, recently the Ethiopian coffee and tea authority has formulated a new reform on Ethiopia coffee market value chain over the ECX in the assumption to ensure traceability, profitability among actors, reduce illegal trade and increase foreign currency. This paper examines the comparative advantages of the newly reformed Ethiopian coffee market value chain over ECX. Multistage sampling techniques were applied to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. Accordingly, the results of this study showed that, the newly reformed Ethiopian coffee market value chain has many advantages than ECX such as it reduces the volume of coffee illegally traded, more traceability, create a room for exporters to buy a coffee based on its grade as per the buyer’s choices. Furthermore, an integral parts of the respondents also indicated that the newly reform coffee market chain solve the problem associated with warehouse, benefits sharing and wastage of time for delivering the commodity. Therefore, the research concluded that, the newly reformed Ethiopian coffee market value chain brought a significant number of benefits for the actors in the value chain. |
