The performance of Strategic Reserve Price Stability of Corporation and its Effect on Sorghum Crop (1997-2007)

Abstract

Achieving food security for sustainable political, economical and social stability has a great attention by country's governments especially the developing ones. As it's known, food security depends on availability (stability of supply) and access, (the population has sufficient purchasing power to gain access to its food needs) by several mechanisms such as inputs subsidy for production stability or developed improvement income programmes….etc. Sudan as a developing country is suffering from various problems that constrained food security such as low income and production fluctuations. The government attempts to decrease the negative impact by several policies one of them is establishing (THE STRATEGIC RESERVE CORPORATION) to interfere in the emergency cases and price stability for cereal crops through purchasing when prices are low to protect producers and selling (distributed) when prices are high to protect consumers. The study attempting to analyze the performance of SRCO on price stability of sorghum by analyzing the model of guarantee floor-ceiling price which is the dependent variable depending on purchased, distributed, and stocks quantities (explanatory variables) during 1997-2007. The study depended mainly on secondary data which is the annual average price per sack of sorghum, annual purchased quantities, annual distributed amounts and annual volume of stocks. Descriptive statistics and regression were used as the techniques of analysis. The results of the study illustrated the weak performance of SRCO on price stability of sorghum during the study period. The estimated parameters were insignificant which include purchased quantities(x1) and distributed amounts(x2). The study recommended the following:- iii 1/. For price stability, high professional management with a good information system and analytical capacity has an important role. 2/ Funding is a significant factor especially for purchase. 3/ The SRCO must subsidize or conduct appropriate studies to improve its functions.