Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
TABLE 5.10
Yearly distribution of rice and wheat from public
stock by open-market sale (million tons)
Year
Rice
Wheat
Total
1992/93
0.01
0.06
0.07
1993/94
0.17
0.12
0.30
1994/95
0.16
0.07
0.23
1995/96
0.40
—
0.40
1996/97
—
—
—
1997/98
0.16
—
0.16
1998/99
—
—
—
1999/2000
—
—
—
2000/01
—
—
—
2001/02
0.18
0.07
0.25
SOURCE
: Food Policy and Monitoring Unit and Ministry of Food, Govern-
ment of Bangladesh.
NOTE
: — indicates not available.
Efficiency in International Trade: Private versus Public Sector
Understandably, it is difficult to assess with any degree of precision the relative
efficiency of public- and private-sector imports to combat the effects of a disas-
ter. In particular, available studies (for example, Rahman 1999) do not provide
data, perhaps because of the difficulty of obtaining them, on various elements of
costs to compare between the sectors. We made an attempt to obtain such data
for 3 months (October through December 1998, when imports were badly needed
because of floods) through some commercial banks in Bangladesh.
An important feature of this dataset is that it not only provides transaction-
by-transaction costs, but also the times taken to complete the transactions.
There are variations in terms of costs, but the time taken generally is much less
for the private sector when import is from India over land routes. However, the
volume of imports by the private sector is always in very small lots ranging from
20 to 5,000 tons. The minimum quantity for import in a single shipment by the
public sector was 70,000 tons and the highest was 100,000 tons. There is very
little scope here to compare the relative efficiency of public and private sectors
in view of the substantial differences in the quantities imported.
The data on the transaction costs of importation suggest that private-sec-
tor imports were in general cheaper but in some cases not substantially so.
However, the private sector was clearly successful in finding lower prices. The
price range of the public sector is between US$256 and $262 per ton, which
compares with US$152 and $262 per ton for the private sector. However, out of
five banks contacted, only three could provide the relevant figures. Of these three
banks, a private-sector bank reported private-sector price range as US$152-167
