Improving Agricultural Market Performance:
Creation and Development of Market Institutions
109
proposition in the olive oil sector. This also demonstrates the needs for more integral
coordination of efforts of the entire agricultural market channel.
Finally, Tunisia’s aquaculture sector is now mainly orientated on raising seabream and seabass
but could be more diversified by processing seafood and fish products, and intensifying fish
farming. Examples include octopuses and Red Sea crabs (“crabe bleu”), which recently invaded
Tunisia’s Mediterranean waters from the Red Sea as a result of climate change. The production
of sponges, sea weed, and algae could be intensified for use in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals
as could the production of fish fingerlings and, particularly, Brine Shrimps (“artémia”) in
Tunisia’s Chotts, which is used extensively in the aquaculture sector as feed. However,
leveraging these “Blue Economy” opportunities requires support from a new market
institution as it involves new market intelligence, information, and data, as well as
technologies, skills, and expertise, which needs to be disseminated through a marketing board.
Developing Current Market Institution(s)
In addition to bottlenecks which require the formation of new market institutions, a need
exists to diversify the product portfolio and appliances of traditional commodities (e.g. olives
and dates used in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, essentials, paste, wood, snacks, beverages, and
other food products), for which several market institutions already exist (e.g. ONH, STS,
SOTUMAG, ONAP, and UTAP).
Moving to upmarket segments, diversifying traditional products, and shifting to more high
value-added products are essential and are typical bottlenecks for a number of commodities.
This deficiency specifically concerns the ONH as a multifold of opportunities exists for the
application of olives (e.g. bottling and packaging of (virgin) olive oil and olive paste, processing
and packaging olive leaves, processing almonds into olives). 209 In fact, it is claimed the olive oil
sector is not managed in an integrated manner, despite its significant economic
contribution.210
In order to improve the control and, hence, effectiveness of the selected market institutions on
Tunisia’s agricultural market system, thereby slowing down the growing number of
intermediaries, it is necessary to collect, process, and diffuse transparent, consistent, and
reliable market intelligence. Such data and statistics need to not only gauge the formal market
segment (i.e. through SOTOUMAG and ONAP daily bulletins) but also the informal distribution
circuits, which now remains beyond the scope of the selected market institutions.211 This also
requires the involvement small-scale market participants (e.g. farmers, distributors, wholesale,
and municipal markets) as this - together with market intelligence - enables to (re)develop
strategies anticipating on current needs and requirements. Municipal markets could take on
this role as they directly interact with small-scale stakeholders.
Strives have been made in this respect. UTAP’s electronic farmers database cover 78 indicators
and GIS applications, which improves service-delivery, market intelligence, and the provision
of market information of agricultural market institutions contributes to a more transparent
and complete picture of the market conditions. Co-management is important in this context as
209 Foreign Investment Promotion Agency (2015), Agrifood Industry in Tunisia, pp. 1-5, Tunis: Foreign Investment Promotion
Agency.
210 Export.gov (2016), Tunisia - Agriculture, available a Accessed
May 2017].
211 Ibid