Ethiopia’s Ministry of Agriculture(MoA) is collecting comments on a draft regulation to re-establish an authority for coffee and tea development years after a similar body was discarded as irrelevant.
The new body, to be called Coffee & Tea Development & Trade Authority, will not be any different from the now defunct Coffee & Tea Authority, which was abandoned by the government seven years ago, said Fikru Amene, coffee development director at MoA.
The Authority was abandoned with the introduction of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange.
The re-establishment of the Authority came at the request of the Prime Minister at the end of April, 2015.
Subsequent to the request, the Ministry finalised the draft regulation based on an assessment of the sector, which was carried out with the collaboration of the Ministry of Trade (MoT) and the Ethiopian Institute of Agriculture Research (EIAR) in 2013.
Currently, MoA is responsible for the development of coffee and tea, while MoT controls and regulates the trade facet.
