Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
-
-
-
Book (stand-alone)The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets (SOCO) 2004 2004Technical developments that increase productivity and reduce costs mean that the long-term trend in real agricultural commodity prices on international markets is gradually downwards but that trend is dominated by significant short-term variability. Many developing countries, and especially the least developed countries, continue to depend on just a few agricultural commodities for the bulk of their export earnings. For them, commodity price variability has a strong impact on incomes, employment and government revenues, compromising macroeconomic planning and development efforts more generally. However, developing countries are also as a group increasingly reliant on food imports. The least developed countries are already net food importers. In these circumstances, falling international food prices are obviously beneficial but increasing reliance on imported food also means greater exposure to the variability in international food prices and hence food import bills. Developing countrie s need to contend with variability of international commodity prices in their efforts to increase their export earnings or manage their food import bills. At the same time, they must also contend with the market distortions introduced by the import tariffs and export and production subsidies used by both developed and developing countries, and by the market power in many commodity value chains of large transnational companies. The traditional international responses to commodity market instabili ty based on market interventions or compensation schemes are not currently favoured and new approaches are needed. These new approaches, such as marketbased price risk management, are aimed less at preventing price swings than at helping producers and consumers predict and manage better their adverse impacts.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
No results found.