Impact of livestock pricing policies on meat and milk output in selected sub-Saharan African countries













Table of Contents


T.O. Williams

ILCA Research Report No. 20
International Livestock Centre for Africa
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
March 1993

ILCA

The International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA), established in 1974, is an autonomous, non-profit making research, training and information Centre with a mandate to improve livestock production throughout sub-Saharan Africa. The activities and publications of the Centre are financed by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The CGIAR members which have funded ILCA to date are the African Development Bank, the European Economic Community, the Ford Foundation, the International Development Research Centre, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, and the governments of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kindgdom and the United States of America.

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ILCA's publication series include Research Reports, Monographs and a quarterly journal, as well as conference proceedings and quarterly ILCA Newsletter. Responsibility for ILCA publications rests solely with the Centre and with such other parties as may be cited as co-authors.

Correct citation: Williams TO. 1993. Impact of livestock pricing policies on meat and milk output in selected sub-Saharan African countries. ILCA Research Report 20. ILCA (International Livestock Centre for Africa), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 88 pp.

ABSTRACT

Livestock pricing policies in many developing countries are often instituted a good appreciation of the consequences of such policies for allocative efficiency, output, trade and consumption. This paper evaluates, in a comparative cross-country context, the objectives and instruments of livestock pricing policy in five sub-Saharan African countries: Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Nigeria, Sudan and Zimbabwe during the period 1970-86. It examines the extent to which pricing policy objectives have been attained and estimates the effects of price interventions on output, consumption, trade and government revenues in order to draw out lessons for the future.

The empirical results indicate that in comparison with real border prices, a certain degree of success was achieved in stabilising real domestic producer prices in the study countries. However, consumers still appear to gain as much as producers in three of the study countries, with negative consequences for foreign exchange earnings and government revenues. The analysis reveals the importance of domestic inflation and exchange rates as key variables for livestock pricing policies and highlights the need to address the macroeconomic imbalances that cause exchange-rate distortions and high domestic inflation at the same time that direct price distortions are being tackled.

KEYWORDS

/Côte d'Ivoire//Mali//Nigeria//Sudan//Zimbabwe/livestock//marketing//price policy/-
/consumption//income//resource allocation//social welfare//social costs//foreign exchange/.

RESUME

Il arrive souvent que les politiques des prix des pays en développement soient instituées sans tenir compte de leurs conséquences sur l'efficacité de la distribution des ressources, ainsi que sur la production, le commerce et la consommation des produits d'origine animale. La présente étude présente une évaluation pays par pays, des objectifs et des instruments des politiques des prix des produits d 'origine animale dans cinq pays de l'Afrique subsaharienne, à savoir la Côte d 'Ivoire, le Mali, le Nigéria, le Soudan et le Zimbabwe entre 1970 et 1986. Elle mesure le degré de réussite des politiques des prix par rapport a leurs objectifs et détermine les effets des interventions sur les prix sur la production, la consommation, et le commerce des produits d'origine animale, de même que sur les recettes publiques de l'Etat en vue d'en tirer les enseignements qui s'imposent.

Il ressort des résultats empiriques de l'étude que par rapport aux prix frontière réels, les pays concernés ont dans une certaine mesure réussi à stabiliser leurs prix intérieurs réels au producteur. Ces résultats révèlent également depuis le début des années 80, un renoncement progressif de ces pays a leur politique de taxation des producteurs. Toutefois, dans trots des pays considérés, les consommateurs semblent profiler autant que les producteurs des politiques officielles des prix, avec des conséquences négatives sur les recettes en devises et les recettes fiscales de l'Etat. L'analyse entreprise dans l'étude révèle l'importance de l'inflation intérieure et des taux de change en tant que variables clés des politiques des prix des produits d'origine animale et met l'accent sur la nécessité pour l'Etat de corriger les déséquilibres macro-économiques responsables des distorsions des taux de change et de l'exacerbation de l'inflation intérieure au moment même où il entreprend de corriger les distorsions directes des prix.

MOTS CLES

/Côte d'Ivoire//Mali//Nigéria//Soudan//Zimbabwe//bétail//commercialisation//politiques des
prix//consommation//revenu//répartition des ressources//bien-être social//coûts sociaux//devises/.

ISBN 92-9053-263-7

This electronic document has been scanned using optical character recognition (OCR) software and careful manual recorrection. Even if the quality of digitalisation is high, the FAO declines all responsibility for any discrepancies that may exist between the present document and its original printed version.


Table of Contents


Acknowledgements

1. Introduction

2. Livestock production, consumption and trade

The production structure

Trends in meat and milk production

General and per capita consumption structure

Trends in meat and milk consumption

Patterns of international trade in meat and milk
Policy implications

3. Objectives and instruments of livestock pricing policies

Price formation in a free market
Objectives of livestock pricing policies

The self-sufficiency objective
The export promotion objective
The inflation control and market stabilisation objectives
The government revenue raising objective
The improved nutrition objective
The employment creation objective

Instruments of livestock products pricing policies

Price controls
Input and consumer price subsidies
Import duties and quantitative import restrictions
Export taxes, licences, quotas and bans

Conflicts between objectives and pricing instruments used
Reasons for government pricing intervention policies

4. The effect of price intervention policies on livestock producers and consumers

The real producer price of livestock products

Price variation

Implicit taxation (or subsidisation) of livestock producers

The Consumer Price of Livestock Products

5. Real and monetary effects of livestock price

Intervention policies
Methodology
Data sources
Results

References

Appendices

Appendix 1: Price data sources, limitations and estimation methods

Data sources
Data limitations
Border equivalent prices
The estimation of real prices
The nominal protection coefficient

Appendix 2: Variability in real domestic and border equivalent producer prices

Appendix 3: Decomposition of the NPC

Appendix 4: Tables on nominal and real producer, consumer and border equivalent prices in five of the study countries, 1970 86

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