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Cotton Program > Highlights

RATES' www.cottonafrica.com Site Continues Rapid Growth

The number of registered traders at the RATES' www.cottonafrica.com website has continued to grow rapidly this quarter, increasing by more than 75% from when the site was first launched. Currently, there are 199 registered users of the site. Postings to the site also showed a significant increase from US $12.9 million last quarter to more than US $50 million this quarter.

Some results of this growth include:

A US textile professional traveling to Kenya requested assistance from RATES in providing hand-woven fabric supplier details for Kenya.
A Swedish special paper manufacturer requested RATES assistance to identify potential suppliers of linters.
A Canadian clothing designer, looking for manufacturers information from Africa, received almost instant feedback after RATES posted a "news alert" to the registered traders on this request.
An Israeli exporters' website, www.export.gov.il , requested that their website be linked to the cottonafrica.com site.

RATES also held a series of successful business lunch forums in Mauritius, Madagascar, Tanzania and Kenya during this quarter in order to continue the increasing interest in the website. After the Mwanza, Tanzania lunch business forum, RATES noted that a group of cotton ginners who had attended the event posted 36,000 tons of cotton lint, worth more than US $43 million, onto the www.cottonafrica.com website.