MARKETING BOARDS AND DOMESTIC STABILIZATION IN NIGERIA.

The "conventional wisdom" on the subject of marketing boards in primary-exporting economies has long been that their principal function is that of domestic stabilization. It has been argued elsewhere that the performance of Nigerian marketing boards should be evaluated instead on the basis of their roles as revenue earners (through the earning of trading surpluses) for the development effort. It is worth considering, nevertheless, what exactly has taken place with respect to domestic stabilization through marketing board action in Nigeria. It will be helpful, for the purpose of evaluating the success of interseason stabilization efforts, to have summary measures of the degree of instability of producer prices, producer incomes, world prices, and export receipts potentially distributable to the producer (potential producer income). With these, one can begin to compare actual experience with that which would have been obtained in the absence of the marketing boards. There are basically three types of domestic stabilization which have, at one time or another, been acknowledged by the Nigerian marketing boards as targets, and which will be discussed here. These are firstly, stability of export producer prices, which may be subdivided into intra- and inter-season stability, secondly, stability of export producer incomes, and thirdly, stability of the overall regional economy.