Improving Agricultural Market Performance:

Developing Agricultural Market Information Systems

Recommendations

Based on the foregoing we propose the following recommendations:

Designin MIS should sp cifically take into ccount the needs of target

stakeholders:

In designing MIS the focus should be on improving the content of the

information provided. The basic aim should be to align information provided to the

identified needs of target stakeholders, especially farmers, traders, financial

intermediaries and other private actors in the agricultural value chains. Hence, an

assessment of the needs of the target stakeholders as well as audience satisfaction

reviews should be regularly undertaken by providers. This is missing in all the cases

reviewed but is crucial going forward.

MIS should go beyond price information to include trend analysis and forecasting:

Based on evidence found on the expectations of market players, it is clear that the

content of MIS should go beyond price information and include reporting trend analysis

which can signal supply and demand conditions and allow market players to take

positions regarding immediate and future price levels. To achieve this, there needs to be

an investment in building output forecasting capacity, which is becoming increasingly

more feasible with advances in ICT. It will also require promoting stock monitoring

systems which can be built, for example, around well-regulated WRS.

Linking MIS to other market-supporting institutions and/or other risk-

management tools to increase their mutual benefits:

Indeed linking the

development of MIS to that of other market-supporting institutions such as WRS and

agricultural commodity exchanges can lead to mutual benefits. On one hand, such

institutional innovations will ensure that price discovery is more transparent and

therefore worth accessing. On the other hand, effective and reliable MIS is an important

prerequisite in successfully developing these market institutions.

Gov rnment support ranging from cross-subsidisation to direct external support

can sustain MIS

: Sustainability of MIS remains a challenge as we found no single case

in the reviews where an existing platform has achieved financial sustainability. Internal

cross-subsidisation by private and government providers, arising from linkages to core

functions appear to reduce the scale of dependence on external agencies such as donors.

It appears, however, that if uptake is enhanced and benefits in terms of improvements

in agricultural production, marketing and finance are more tangible then external

support may be more justifiably advocated on the grounds of the ‘public good’

characteristics of market information.

Formal or informal institutional setting can improve coordination among the key

stakeholders:

Though the specific case of Indonesia indicates potential benefits from

instituting a formal legislative or regulatory framework to underpin MIS, there does not

appear to be strong demand for replicating this in other countries. Despite that, the

Indonesia case offers important lessons in terms of governance of MIS, which other

countries can learn from, especially where there is a proliferation of platforms with

many of them being dependent to some degree on external funding support. Key among

the governance systems we recommend is setting up specific working groups with

representation from government, providers, key stakeholders and donors. The working