ETHIOPIA – A Dubai-based sugar trader has pulled out of a contract to supply the Ethiopian Sugar Corporation with 44,000 tonnes of sugar, valued at US$2.2 million.
According to Addis Fortune, Agri Commodities had written a letter of termination on October 3, 2017, informing the Corporation on the cessation of contract, valued at US$2.2 million
According to the company, there was controversy over the weight and quality of the merchandise which led to the falling apart of the deal.
Agri had not yet made any payment to the Corporation, claiming in the failure to confirm the shipping documents, though the settlement was supposed to be made before the merchandise exited the factory.
“If you had presented all the documents in time, you would have been paid under the letter of credit,” reads the letter Agri wrote to the Corporation.
As signed by Krishnakant Mishra, representative of the company, the letter attributed the termination to the inability of the Corporation to present a certificate of weight and quality issued by an independent body.
“This is a minor discrepancy not to pay us for the sugar,” Gashaw Aychiluhim, corporate communications director of the Corporation, told Fortune.
“They will be accountable for the loss we incurred.”
Following the termination, Bright Border Crossing Transport Association, the contracted company for the transportation of the item to Kenya, had begun returning the sugar from Moyale, a border town 794.7Km south of Addis Ababa, to Wonji, deploying 110 trucks to return the merchandise to the factory.
Agri also demanded that the Corporation covers the 242,000 dollars it paid to transport the sugar and claimed compensation for the failure of the contract.
The merchandise, according to the company, had been exposed to temperature and spoilage during the two-month trucks had been stranded in Moyale.
