Livestock prices register decline

Esoko Commodity Index

Prices of livestock, monitored by Esoko market watchers have shown consistent declines in the past few weeks. According to Esoko market watchers, the heavy livestock trade between Ghana, Mali and Burkina Faso means that whenever the CFA franc (the currency of Mali and Burkina Faso) falls, livestock prices tend to move in tandem.
Moro Abubakar Fuseini, Esoko market watcher in the Kumasi Mayanka livestock market has reported that “business activities are brisk, but the fall in CFA is causing market uncertainties. Sometimes, traders lose on livestock trades because of the unstable CFA). He maintained a similar view for the week ending August 6.
But Fuseini believes that prices should have been much lower, if traders were not forced to pay unapproved monies on the road. This, he explains as follows: “monitored market activities show that livestock prices, even though they are trading at a seasonal low, should have been much lower if transport costs were not high”. “Trade barriers, that is police and customs inspections and sometimes extortions from traders have increased costs for livestock traders. I would say that market activity currently is in line with the seasonal price movements that we normally experience. There is no exceptional price movements of note”, Fuseini said.
However, Sheikh Issa Amartey, Esoko market watcher in the Ashaiman cattle market, and also a member of the Ashaiman Cattle Breeders and Traders Association believes that the currency fluctuation has not reflected that much in trading in Accra.
“What I can say is that we have seasonal peak and lean seasons which also determines stock levels in our market, and so this is what tends to affect price increases and decreases”.
With the other monitored commodities, in the Ejura market, in the Ashanti region, Wassan T. Adisa, a market trader has reported that prices for maize and yam have experienced severe fluctuations during trading hours. According to her, this could, primarily, be due to the lack of good feeder roads from the rural growing areas of these food crops to the urban centres like Kumasi.
Not everyone seems happy with the falling prices in the markets. Hawa Amadu, member of the Ashanti Region Poultry Farmers Association has told Esoko that poultry farmers are really up against it, as the price of eggs keeps going down on weekly basis. From her monitored position, the price of soyabean is moving in the opposite direction- rising.
Local rice has gained price stability in recent weeks, and tomatoes which maintained an upward swing in markets like Agbobloshie in Accra has since come down
Prices increased from GHC 1.30 and GHC1.40 to GHC 1.40 and GHC 1.50 over the week. Prices of commodities covered in the Bawku and Tamale markets remained unchanged over the week.
Esoko Ghana Commodity Index (EGCI) is a cash market price index composed of data on physical commodities. The index, which is published weekly by the company, tracks prices at wholesale and retail levels namely the Esoko Ghana Commodity Index-Retail (EGCI-R) and the Esoko Ghana Commodity Index-Wholesale (EGCI-W) - and will enable consumers to get prices of agricultural products in real time just by texting through short messaging service (SMS) codes.
Source: Esoko