ASSESSMENTS OF COFFEE MARKETING CHAIN AND ITS EXPORT PERFORMANCE IN ETHIOPIAN GDP

Abstract

Coffee is one of the most important traded commodities in the world and it plays a major role to Ethiopian economy. Currently, Ethiopia is the leading Arabica coffee producer in Africa, the fifth largest and the tenth in coffee exports in the world. Ethiopia export coffee to the international markets through different marketing channels and structures. Private producers, cooperative unions and exporters are the main actors of the coffee export sector. Currently, Ethiopian export coffee performance has decline. Due to this, the study was conducted on coffee marketing chain and its export performances on GDP. The data were collected through close ended questionnaire and documents. The sources of the information were Coffee exporters. The study was done in three factors: coffee marketing chain, marketing structure and export performance. The descriptive analysis shows that the dominant coffee marketing channels which scored the highest of 70.73% is channel III, similarly the dominant marketing structure which recorded 65.85% was structure III. In different channels and structures there is a significant difference in coffee export performance. The highest coffee export performance in quantity was recorded in 2013 and the lowest was in 2012, in value (USD) scored the highest for the year 2011 and the lowest was in 2014. The result of the study also shows that the factors which influence coffee export performances are coffee quality, Lack of international market, international coffee price and supply of coffee. From the results, it is concluded that quality (Specialty) coffee significantly influence both in volume and value of export coffee. The study recommends to produce and export organic and specialty coffee, this helps to increase the country's economy.