ADDIS ABABA, Jan 18 (Reuters) – Ethiopia opened a $21 million electronic commodities exchange on Friday that will trade six crops including coffee, wheat, maize and sesame.

“The exchange system will contribute a lot to create healthy relations between producers and buyers of Ethiopian commodities,” Addisu Legesse, deputy prime minister and agriculture minister, said at the inaugural ceremony for the system which cost $21 million to instal.

“It will create a new marketplace to serve all market forces, including farmers, traders, exporters and consumers.”

The exchange, ECEX, will trade goods weighed, graded and certified at warehouses around the country, which is Africa’s biggest coffee producer.

“ECEX also provides a secure system of handling offers and bids, a risk-free payment and goods delivery system to settle transactions,” said Eleni Gabre-Medhin, ECEX programme manager.

Ethiopia expects to export 220,000 tonnes of coffee worth $500 million in the current 2007/08 season. It expects overall production to rise to 370,000 tonnes in 2007/08 from 330,000 tonnes in the previous season, the agriculture ministry says.

The ministry said Ethiopia was also ranked second on the continent as a maize producer.

(Reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse; editing by Michael Roddy)