Marketing information services presently available in the country are by no means adequate. Collection, compilation and dissemination of prices alone, as are being presently done, are only a small part of the total marketing information services and do not help the various beneficiaries /users in fully achieving their objectives.
Arrangements for the collection of information on market arrivals/supplies, volumes of sales, seasonal variations in regional production/supplies, quantum and direction of movement to various markets within and outside the country, net availabilities, projections of supply and demand are conspicuous by their absence.
The development of a more broad-based information system of data collection, compilation, analyses and dissemination is limited by lack of resources commitment to marketing, the dearth of sufficient number of trained personnel and the unsatisfactory response by private sector marketing functionaries to data enquiries.
This has limited the proper analysis of price movements, inter-market price comparison (Market Transparency), the calculation of marketing costs etc resulting in a limited ability to suggest any really constructive and viable policies and measures towards marketing development and pricing.
PURPOSE: Marketing information services are undertaken to keep the producers, traders and consumers abreast of the market conditions including price fluctuations in respect of various agricultural commodities.
These services are also a key element in the decision-making process of various institutions in Pakistan.
On the basis of marketing information, Government agencies assess the welfare of both the producers and consumers, plan price/marketing corrective or development steps and measure international trade options. Agriculture-related industries monitor this information in planning production and marketing strategies. Universities and research institutions use this, particularly the price data, as an input into econometric and enterprise analyses and linear programming.
An efficient marketing information system is therefore of immense help to (i) the farmer in planning his production and sales, (ii) the agro-based industry in devising its production programmes, and marketing strategies (iii) the government in taking policy decisions on various aspects of marketing, including international trade and legislation and (iv) university students and research scholars in solving various problems through sophisticated statistical methods.
Agricultural marketing (Price) data is collected at three levels in the marketing chain viz farm gate or harvest, wholesale and retail. Wholesale and retail prices are collected for many years, resulting in a number of published time series.
There is a deficiency of price data at the farm level. Harvest season prices of the farm gate are collected in the Punjab and Balochistan provinces. Until early 1980's farm level prices used to be collected in Sindh as well as, but these were never published. NWFP has no arrangement for the collection of such prices.
METHODOLOGY: The price collection staff of the above mentioned organisations collect the price data, mostly through personal visits to the market functionaries operating in various markets. There appears to be no statistically sound sampling plan for any of these organisations. The selection of markets is arbitrary.
In the absence of any scientific grading of commodities, most agencies require their enumerators/inspectors to quote prices of "Fair Average/quality (FAQ). Some agencies ask their staff to report three quotes viz high medium and low and an average of all the three. Still others consider the range of prices to be more representative.
As different agencies collect the price data with the same frequency and in the same markets, it involves a lot of duplication. Further the results differ widely mostly due to quality variations of the products and also because of the absence of identical bases.
Processing and compilation of data differ from agency to agency depending upon the purpose, use and availability of processing facilities as well as the capabilities of their personnel. Almost all tabulation is done manually. Small electronic calculators and computers are, however, used for working out simple arithmetic averages.
The provincial govt price collecting agencies also function in similar fashion. However, the Federal Bureau of Statistics, treats the price data collected scientifically. Beside averaging and tabulating it in periodical statements they also utilise them in index computation and the preparation of National Income estimates, GNP and GDP by using the necessary statistical methods.
PROBLEMS AND ISSUES: The main deficiencies identified in the price collecting and reporting system are identified below:
(a) Geographic Coverage: Retail prices appear to be skewed towards urban centres. Such over-representation of urban centres, where prices are likely to be different from those in the rural areas, leads to biased estimates, wholesale price coverage is generally consistent with the regional market hierarchies, but geographic price differences are not usually weighted with the respective market mix.
Within a given urban area sample frames are stratified by local markets and by shops but there is no consistent attempt to weigh each strata by market volume or population.
(b) Seasonal Coverage: Prices are collected on a daily, weekly fortnightly and monthly basis, but most of the commodities are subjected to fundamental seasonal shifts in supply and demand which are not reflected in seasonal variations in reported prices. Same price trends throughout a crop season may be due to either non-representative samples or misquoted prices.
(c) Farm level Prices: The greatest weakness in agricultural price data is the area of farm level prices. At present the Punjab crop reporting services is the only public sector agency in the country which collects such prices using systematic data collection in the country.
(d) Data accuracy: How closely reported prices represent actual market prices is a question which agitates the mind of many. It has been observed in a number of instances that published series show little or no change for several months when in fact these prices have changed considerably during the period under review. In some instances instead of open market prices govt determined prices are quoted.
Further, there are discrepancies in prices reported by different agencies for the same commodity in the same market and of the same day. This may be due to the absence of a commodity grading system and lack of standards for price reporting.
(e) Availability of data: Farmers, as a user group, are largely neglected in the distribution of price information. In selling their produce, they have to deal with traders and commission agents who know current market prices or even older ones and thus farmers are in a disadvantageous position while bargaining. With no farm level prices known to the public, this group's position can be hardly assessed objectively and correctly.
(f) Duplication of data collection: There is much duplication of data collection by different public sector agencies when most of them generally have a tight budgetary position. Same type of prices of same commodities and items in the same market with identical frequencies are collected by more than one agencies.
This duplication, besides causing avoidable expenditure to the govt., also creates confusion for users as quotations from different sources are not comparable. This duplication of efforts is mostly due to lack of communication.
(g) Communication of data needs: Data users often complain about quality, timeliness and other defects of the prices collected and published by collection agencies. But there seems to be little formal effort to communicate these short comings and their own to the collection agencies.
Two-way communication of ideas both vertically within statistical agencies, and horizontally across organisations is often limited. Professional development of the agricultural price collection system will be limited so long as there is a lack of willingness to exchange ideas among different agencies.
(h) Price analysis: Very little price analysis work is done by the concerned government agencies and, whatever limited effort is made in this regard is not systematic and regular for instance, information on farm level price spreads, price elasticities seasonal price parameter and price forecasts have most often been wanting.
(i) Price summarisation and presentation: Merely simple arithmetic averages are used to estimate combined prices for several markets or over specified time periods. This gives equal weight to all observations regardless of the volumes of sales associated with each price quotation, resulting in unrealistic price estimation.
(j) Incomplete marketing information: As stated earlier the marketing information service in the country is mainly confined to the collection, compilation and dissemination of agricultural prices. Marketing information services is much more than mere price collection.
It includes information on market arrivals, supplies, volumes of sales, seasonal variations in regional out-put supplies, quantum and direction of movement of commodities to different destinations by the availability of projections of supply and demand.
Unless the marketing information services is broad-based to include the collection and analysis and dissemination of data on these aspects, it is difficult to achieve the desired results for assisting the farmers and policy makers and the decision taking government authorities as well as research scholars.
Thus, in a nut shell, the marketing information service which is so vital for an efficient marketing system of agricultural products is confined just to the collection, compilation and dissemination of price data.
Other important marketing statistics such as commodity market arrivals and their sources, dispatches and their destinations, carry-over stocks, supply/demand estimates and projections, seasonal variations in supply etc are not at all gathered on any regulatory basis. No situation and outlook reports are prepared/issued on a continued basis.
Whatever little marketing information service is available eg collection, compilation and dissemination of wholesale retail marketing prices, that too suffers from a number of deficiencies such as duplication of efforts in the collection of price data, in consistencies in the collection/published data vis-à-vis market prices, inadequate fragmented and intermittent analysis of price data, little access to timely price data by the farmers.
Absences of satisfactory and regular arrangements for the collection of farm gate price, lack of mechanical/computerised processing price data, no weightage of average prices by volumes of sales, population or other market criteria, lack of an effective grading system for farm products to facilitates collection of prices according to grade and thus make them comparable with prices in other markets.
A great time-lag in the collection and release/publication of price data, a lack of opportunities for the exchange of ideas between the collection agencies and the user and little or no co-ordination among various data collection agencies.
In order to bring about an improvement in the existing marketing information services, an attempt has been made to make certain suggestions without assigning any priorities as under:
(a) The present marketing information service should be made broad-based by collecting, compiling and disseminating farmgate prices as well as information on market arrivals, sources of supplies direction of dispatches, carry over stocks, short term projections of supply and demand, seasonal variation in supplies etc.
(b) Duplication in the collection of agricultural price data should be eliminated as far as feasible to improve the cost efficiency of price collection in the country.
(c) The reported prices should be associated with the volume of sales to make them more realistic.
(d) A comprehensive commodity grading system should be evolved and enforced for internal trading so as to relate the price quotations with various grades thus making them more meaningful and realistic.
(e) Representative coverage of all geographic areas for data collection purposes should be done without giving unnecessary edge to urban markets over rural markets.
(f) Present commodity coverage should also be reviewed to include important items of livestock, fisheries and forestry origins.
(g) Data processing should be computerised as far as possible to ensure accuracy of information and timeliness of its dissemination.
(h) A system should be evolved for speedy reporting of prevailing prices in different markets to the farmers to asset them in their marketing decisions.
(i) Regular training courses and programmes for price collectors/enumerators should be arranged by the price collection agencies to improve their techniques and assure uniformity in collection practices.
(j) Better and closer co-ordination should be brought about amongst the various price collection agencies as well as the key users of price data to avoid or minimise duplication in data collection, discuss methodology and find solutions to data collection problems and deficiencies.
As the above indicated programme for improving the marketing information system may involve several organisational, administrative and, above all, financial problems and implications, it will be in the fitness of things if an experts committee be formed to consider the feasibility of its implementation in phases.
NOTE: The relevant data and other information has been obtained from various publications of the F.A.O year book and country reports.
Another important point to solve data collection and dissemination lies with the use of computer by public agencies which are still behind private agencies.