Focus on Forex

All

With so much talk this week on forex rates of the currencies of the world’s largest Producer and Consumer countries and how these affect coffee prices, it might be a welcome distraction to look at how the birr has been behaving in the last few months. No surprises, the birr has steadily devalued 30% between January 2020 and the 1st of April 2021. A year ago we speculated whether the local currency would have reached 40 to the greenback by mid 2020, alas this milestone was only reached in March 2021.

Birr 41.34 = USD 1

With Elections due 5th June, simmering tensions between ethnic groups are coming to the surface. For now the central Government is in control, let’s hope that things stay this way to insure a peaceful poll.

Shippers’ prices remain firm, as do Minimum Registration Prices, making sales difficult in a declining terminal market. In any event shippers are focusing on fulfilling previous commitments in a challenging logistics scenario, empty containers continue to be hard to find. Volumes of Naturals reaching ECX continue to disappoint and frustrate shippers.

Have a good (long) weekend