West African Trade: A Study of Competition, Oligopoly and Monopoly in a Changing Economy

This chapter and Chapter 23 review the price policies of the marketing boards from their establishment in 1947 and 1949 to the end of 1951, as well as, more briefly, some results of the operations of the West African Produce Control Board. In assessing the policies of the present boards, it should be remembered that the years covered were to some extent the experimental, or formative, period of these organizations.² This does not affect the description of the policies, nor the analysis of their effects, nor the discussion of the arguments advanced in their support; indeed, it only serves to bring out more clearly some of the problems created by an experimental, ad hoc approach. But in a critical assessment of the decisions taken it is relevant that over this period the boards could be said to be feeling their way; and further that they have had to do so without a clearly defined mandate.

The marketing boards began their operations with important advantages. The two Cocoa Boards inherited some £22 M. from the West African Produce Control Board. That organization did not begin to accumulate surpluses on other products until February 1947 (since up to that time it sold to the Ministry of Food on a cost basis), and in the space of about two years it accumulated £11m. on oil-palm produce and £10m. on groundnuts, which it handed over to the successor boards in April 1949. These last two figures were higher than the total paid to producers by the successor boards in their first year of operation. Moreover, the demand for cocoa was high, and oilseeds were still in acutely short supply; the Ministry of Food had guaranteed minimum prices for

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