NCE ditches online coffee sale, favours trading floor

The Nairobi Coffee Exchange (NCE) traded online last week to offload stocks offered for sale before it was shut down, even as the Ministry of Agriculture wrote to the Director of Public Health to allow the trading floor to reopen.

NCE last Wednesday conducted two consecutively postponed sales online to free stocks and pay farmers who had been waiting for their cash.

Chief executive officer Daniel Mbithi, however, said the system used was not a tailor-made application for online trading and therefore had a lot of loopholes that may affect price, hence the need to have the auction hall reopened.

“We had a backlog of two sales that we had to clear and farmers too needed to be paid their money. However, the system has some weaknesses in terms of pricing, the reason why we need to go back to an auction hall,” said Mr Mbithi.

In last week’s trading, the average price of the commodity dropped to Sh16,274 (sale 19) and Sh15,862 (sale 18) down from Sh20,000 registered in the last trading before the auction was ordered to close.

Agriculture Food Authority, under which the regulator Coffee Directorate falls, said the auction had put in place all the required mechanism as advised by the Public Health department and was now ready to resume. “We are now waiting for the Director of Public Health to conduct inspection before we resume as our parent ministry has already written to the department,” said Director-General Anthony Muriithi.

Mr Muriithi pointed out they expect the auction hall to be opened before end of the month once it has been approved by Health officials.

The Ministry of Health has restricted crowds to no more than 15 people as the government moves to curb the spread of Covid-19, which has so far affected more than 270 people.

The Mombasa Tea Auction had also been temporarily suspended last month before intervention that saw the management seek a larger venue to accommodate traders.

NCE wanted to conduct the trading at a city hotel but the plans were cancelled after traders turned down the proposal saying the venue was a quarantine centre.