This project focuses on three main crops, chilli, tomato and mango, to investigate existing marketing arrangements, assess domestic and foreign market potential and identify pathways to address main problems. It will then formulate an appropriate marketing policy reforms programme, drawing on both Pakistani and international reform experiences.
Current research
- Policy & Institutional Reforms to Improve Horticultural Markets in Pakistan (ADP/2014/043)
This project focuses on three main crops, chilli, tomato and mango, to investigate existing marketing arrangements, assess domestic and foreign market potential and identify pathways to address main problems. It will then formulate an appropriate marketing policy reforms programme, drawing on both Pakistani and international reform experiences.
Pakistan’s horticultural industry has huge potential. However, its present performance is well below potential, characterised by low productivity, poor quality, high wastage, and low exports. Some of these issues are being addressed through the Horticulture program.
Working in parallel, this project investigates the functioning of the marketing system itself - widely considered to be one of the main factors constraining the industry’s modernisation and development. The project objectives are:
- Investigate main features of existing marketing systems including role of policy, regulatory and institutional factors;
- Assess domestic and global (including China) market potential;
- Identify and assess extent of, and main factors contributing to, market inefficiency and low exports, and evaluate costs of inefficiency;
- Identify reform options, analyse their efficiency and distributional impacts, and formulate and disseminate a set of concrete, practical recommendations for policy action.
- Monash University
- University of Queensland
- Alfaisal University Saudi Arabia
- Macquarie University
- Pakistan Agricultural Research Council
- Pakistan Agriculture Coalition (PAC)
- Karachi School of Business and Leadership (KSBL)
- Sindh Agriculture University
- Quaid-e-Azam University
- University of Agriculture Faisalabad
- Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi
- Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy at the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Prof Jeff LaFrance, Monash University Jeffrey T. LaFrance Monash [email protected]
Dr Muhammad Qasim, PARC, Muhammad Qasim [email protected]
Dr Thilak Mallawaarachchi, University of Queensland, [email protected]
