ZMX engages small, medium millers association
THE Zimbabwe Mercantile Exchange (ZMX) has engaged the Small and Medium Millers Association of Zimbabwe with a view to increasing the number of buyers in the commodities market that began the weekly auctions recently.
At its second auction undertaken last week, ZMX traded 105,38 tonnes of white maize at an average price of US$285,00 per tonne valued at US$30 033 8 in total.
The exchange’s inaugural trade saw about 95 tonnes being traded. In an interview after a breakfast meeting with members of the Small and Medium Millers Association of Zimbabwe (SMMAZ) in Harare yesterday, ZMX general manager Mr Garikayi Munema said:
“As ZMX we managed to meet with the members of the Small and Medium Millers Association (and) we explained to them the operations of the commodities exchange starting of course from how it’s set up as a Public-Private Partnership involving the Government of Zimbabwe and private sector players.
“As an exchange, we are very excited with the responses that we’re getting, the members (SMMAZ) have shown great interest in participating in the exchange and to be buying commodities on the commodities exchange as it is on a willing seller-willing buyer basis.
“Price discovery is one aspect that they like because it allows the buyers and sellers to determine the price at which commodities will be bought and sold in a free market.”
ZMX deals with small-scale, medium-scale, and large-scale farmers, and agro-processors.
“We have already had meetings with other groups of millers and this is part of the ongoing work that we are doing to engage everyone.
“Today we were meeting with small and medium millers but the journey does not end here as we are still going out to talk to a number of other value chain processors.
“We already have banks, custodial banks, settlement banks, brokers so we do speak to a lot of participants from the financing side, production side, processing side, and even the regulators,” he said.
The ZMX operations include the warehouse receipt system and the spot market trading of all commodities that are listed in the Warehouse Receipt Act.
The exchange has a total of 49 commodities including oilseeds, grains, livestock and horticulture that would be traded on the platform but at the moment ZMX focuses on grains and oilseeds.
Mr Munema said plans are in the pipeline to introduce auctions for other commodities such as soya beans in line with market demands.
From the breakfast meeting, he said ZMX noted that small and medium millers are faced with unavailability of commodities at the right price.
“They want the commodity especially maize, wheat, soya bean, red sorghum and white sorghum those seem to be the commodities in demand and we are making plans to ensure that we connect them to as many suppliers as we can so that they can buy those commodities,” said Mr Munema.
