Chapter 5. Impact of Mali’s food and agricultural policies 173
Figure 14. Market development gaps (MDG) by product, in %, 2005-2010
Source: Authors
Figure 14 shows the evolution of MDGs, which constitute another flagship group of indicators for the
MAFAP project (see definition and modes of interpretation described above). There are three major
product groups in terms of MDGs: imports, exports and a group composed of thinly traded products
and products related to food security.
Exports reveal important negative market development gaps, on average more than two times those of
imported products. This is due to the importance of cotton, with an average MDG of -33 percent over the
period. Livestock and groundnut have respective average MDGs of -7 percent and -11 percent. Cotton’s
important MDG, despite it receiving strong incentives, shows that incentives do not necessarily mean there are
no market inefficiencies. In the case of cotton, it is clear that governmental policies give incentives to producers
even though the value chain itself is inefficient.
Globally, it is clear that MDGs reduce the level of incentives and increase that of disincentives. It should
also be noted that cotton and cattle both experience negative in MDGs, despite having opposite
situations in terms of incentives and disincentives. This means that MDGs are not, as might be expected,
correlated to the effects of explicit policies and affect all categories of products regardless of their status
in terms of incentives and disincentives.
Such findings suggest that these differences are primarily explained by the combination of market
structure and the conditions of competition, processing technologies and market power wielded by
certain actors.
The import substitution products (milk and rice) are the only category of products with positive MDGs
for about a third of the study period (2005-2006). These MDGs then become negative, as for other
AVERAGE MDG FOR THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR
AVERAGE MDG FOR IMPORTED PRODUCTS
AVERAGE MGD FOR EXPORTED PRODUCTS
AVERAGE MGD FOR THINLY TRADED PRODUCTS
AVERAGE MGD FOR PRODUCTS IMPORTANT FOR FOOD SECURITY-120 %-100 %-80 %-60 %-40 %-20 %0 %20 %2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010