Empirical investigation of agricultural export trade in Nigeria (1975 - 2008): a case study of cocoa and palm kernel

Abstract

The study examined the export performance of two major agricultural commodities (cocoa and palm kernel in Nigeria). It covered the periods 1975 to 2008 and it adopted cointegration and error correction modeling (ECM) methodology. The time series data were obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) for the empirical work. Unit root and cointegration tests were conducted which revealed the existence of short and long term equilibrium relationships between the dependent and independent variables in the model. The parsimonious error correction result shows that, virtually all the variables were rightly signed and significant. The result showed that, a 1% increase in producer price, commercial loan to Agriculture and exchange rate will reduce export quantities of cocoa by 0.11, 0.23 and 0.8 per cent respectively, while the result of palm kernel are almost similar to that of cocoa. The empirical findings show that, there is the need to promote expanded production in both cocoa and palm kernel, while at the same time giving greater attention to the packaging and the design of export product to command better prices and patronage at the international market.