Bale, Robe — For outside onlookers, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed officially unveiled the country's plan to export wheat to neighboring countries from products in Bale zone, announcing the plans to export of 32 million quintals of wheat on the day, it presented a spotless spectacle.
The impacts of wheat price inflation on farmers, local consumers and the country at large is yet to be defined, but there are enough worries attributing such disorientation to the government's ill-planned export initiative, while some argue it happened due to deliberate market sabotage. Both sides of the argument, however, agree that the unprecedented price rise and extreme drop of wheat supply to the market were witnessed in the immediate wake pf the premier's announcement.
According to him government officials informally forced wheat farmers to sell their product at a fixed price of 3,300 birr per quintal until it purchased the amount it needed. The market was then"liberated". "The price of goods and services, particularly that of steel, cement and fertilizer is extremely high; even a simple trouser as expensive as a quintal of wheat. Farmers have restricted to sell their products at such low prices", which impacted their economic ability to cope up with the overall market inflation in the country, Hailu added.
Jemal Umer, marketing officer at Siko Mando Farmers Union, based in Bale, Robe said that the union purchased some 170,000 quintals of wheat in January and February this year at a fixed price of approximately 3,300 birr, out of which it supplied more than 30,000 quintals to the Ethiopian crop market as of end of March.
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