Grain Markets in Niger

Excerpt from the report Conclusion: Niger is an interesting case of a food deficit country that is able to meet much of its food needs through the active private trade that imports from one of its neighbors. In addition, it has a parastatal agency that attempts to regulate producer and consumer prices while providing for urban consumption and setting aside an emergency stock. Its activities take place almost entirely outside of the private sector. But to date, the Government has been unwilling to reconcile the reality of the extensive and essential private trade with its own necessity to maintain its parastatal to satisfy urban food grain demand and thereby fulfill certain political objectives. Until this year, it has refused to acknowledge the extent of the commercial grain trade taking place, preferring to perpetuate a set of mistaken suppositions and assumptions about the structure and performance of the markets and the behavior of those participating in them. These assumptions have been the basis of policy decisions to regulate the market and in many cases, they have turned out to be costly and usually inefficient. So in discussing the grain market system in Niger, these assumptions must be challenged as they have been here, and evidence to support an alternative view must be presented to provide a more realistic picture of the grain markets.