Domestic Terms of Trade and Resource Transfers from Agriculture: A Case Study of Pakistan

摘要

This study has estimated: domestic terms of trade (TOT) for agriculture and its sub-sectors in Pakistan, and implicit taxation of important cropsduring the period 1991-08. The TOT for agriculturethough fluctuating, however, reflect a trend of deterioration over time. Notwithstanding the overall declining trend, agriculture sector experienced improvements in its TOT indices during the 90s; rising from 99.42 in 1990-91 to 109.11 in 1998-99. However, the current decade has witnessed a sharp decline in the TOT index which had fallen to 96.97 by 2007-08. A comparison of the domestic producer prices of major crops with their corresponding international pricesreflects implicit taxation of domestic production during the study period. During 1991-08, annualresource transfers from wheat, basmati paddy, coarse paddy, seed cotton and sugarcane have averaged at $1.25 billion. Resource transfers increased to $1.72 billion per year during 2006-08 with wheat accounting for 81 percent of the total.