ASSESSMENT OF LOCAL SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT AND EXPORT CHALLENGES ON SESAME SEED; THE CASE OF AMBASEL TRADING AND SELIT HULLING

Abstract

Oil seeds, are the second largest source of foreign currency for Ethiopia's next to coffee, contributing significantly for the achievement of the country's high economic growth over the last five successive years (Hailu, 2009). The current literature indicates that if the sesame oilseed supply chain is operated wisely it can be productive, profitable and competitive in the global market in the future than the current condition. This research also try to observe the supportive idea and get the solution by carrying the objective of concentrating on the assessment of supply chain management of sesame from production to exporting systems and its challenges by taking the two processor and exporter companies, Ambasel Trading and Selit Haling by using the Methods and materials of data collection from both primary (qualitative and quantitative) and secondary sources. The primary data for this study were collected from total size of 393, from Metema farmers & Union, suppliers and exporter through application of appropriate statistical procedures. For the qualitative preparation 17 purposively selected focal persons are interviewed. Additionally, secondary data was also gathered using pervious research works in the sector and different documents. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS. To see the association between each independent variable with outcome variable Binary Logistic Regression analysis was carried out and variables that show significant associations were included in a single model and Multiple Logistic Regressions were performed to identify the most significant predictors.95% CI and P-value (0.05) were used to assess the degree of statistically significance. The founding show that the major actors in the supply chain management of sesame from production to exporters were farmers, suppliers and exporters .The main challenges faced by the chain actors were lack of improved seed, unexpected rain during harvest, shortage of labor force, shortage of capital, and transportation from storage to market area, default, lack of skill , financial capability problem and EXC price posting, delay on ECX process, raising transport price and large scale gap between ECX’s price and local traders prices and very poor network service. Generally, this study revealed that marriage, strategic supplier partnership, customer relationship and level of information quality were the stronger predictors of work improvement in supply chain management of sesame from production to exporter. Based on the above findings the following recommendations are suggested. Enhancing production and productivity, expansion of road infrastructures to reduce transport costs to attract private investment in the area and to facilitate the supply of labor as the production system is highly labor intensive, encourage local value addition, communication skill proxies, improve credit facilities and Banking services e.t.c.