Temporal price analysis of palm kernel in urban and rural markets in South East agroecological zone of Nigeria

Abstract

The study estimated temporal price analysis of palm kernel in urban and rural markets in Southeast, Nigeria. Secondary data was used  for the study that was obtained from quarterly publications of Agricultural Development Programme (ADPs) of three selected states in  Southeast agroecological zone. The data were obtained from average monthly wholesale price in naira for palm kernel from the rural and urban markets of the three states under study and covered a period of 60 months. Temporal price model was implored to evaluate the  temporal price efficiency of palm kernel in the zone. The decision is that if the net seasonal price is significantly greater than storage cost,  the market is an imperfectly competitive market and inefficient in pricing system. Result shows that net seasonal price increases  commonly exceeded cost of storage for palm kernel. This observation is from the 72 positive values of the computed net seasonal price  out of the 120 values observed from the study. There was also a graphical presentation of the result. The lowest point recorded for the  rural net seasonal price occurred in September 2016 and the peak was in December 2018. For the net seasonal prices to be above the  positive line in the graph for most periods of the year means that net seasonal price values were more than the storage cost. This  suggests that the Southeast urban and rural palm kernel wholesale markets are imperfectly competitive and there was inefficiency in the  pricing system. Government should formulate policies that will stabilize prices of palm kernel over time.