Role of Domestic Livestock Marketing System in Promotion of Livestock Exports

Abstract

The domestic livestock marketing system in Sudan is traditional and unsophisticated, managed and financed by the private sector. With the exception of eleven livestock markets built in 1980s by Livestock and Meat Marketing Corporation (L.M.M.C) and recently the group of six markets built by the improving production marketing project, the majority of livestock markets are no more than an open space with no installation or facilities. The continuous expansion of domestic demand for meat and the government desire to maximize exports earnings revealed that the system has some signs of deficiencies and inefficiency and reached its upper limit beyond which can hardly cope with further demand. For the system to cope with the changing circumstances, the constraints imposed on it need to be removed. Among these constraints are the traditional method of production coupled with the nomad selling attitude and the exogenous factors affecting its performance, the fragmentation of domestic livestock market coupled with local authorities intervention, the inadequate, physical infrastructure, absence of regulating laws, capital starvation throughout the system, the present selling and buying methods, lack of weighing scales, absence of market information system, absence of a central regulating body, multiple taxation, high cost and difficulties in transport and high feed prices and above all the absence of strategy for development of the whole system. Lesson learned from the previously liquidated L.M.M.C and the existing A.R.S.Co should be considered; however, there is an urgent need for intervention and the government should take a quick positive actions to solve these well-known constraints, otherwise the ample inefficiencies in the internal market performance will badly harm the producers, the consumers, operators and most importantly will impede any effort to enhance the external competition necessary for pushing the exports for the achievement of national goals.