Agricultural pricing policy and trade in several SADCC countries: preliminary results

This paper focuses on the incentive effects of agricultural pricing and exchange rate policies on intra-SADCC trade in staple food commodities. In the following section, recent intra-SADCC trade patterns in staple food commodities are briefly reviewed. Then, the transportation cost argument for intraregional trade is assessed by examining differences between import and export parity prices for a number of SADCC markets. Import parity prices from various official and parallel market sources are then compared to illustrate the potential incentive effects of agricultural pricing and exchange rate policies on intraregional trade. The paper concludes by advocating the need for more systematic collection of parallel market data as an important input into agricultural policy analysis in SADCC countries.

A research paper on the effects of pricing policies on trade within the SADCC region.