Price movements

Through their repercussion on export earnings, price fluctuations are often held responsible for the variations in the growth rate of countries producing primary goods, especially since exports of a single primary good account for a large part of the total exports of many countries. But apart from the fact that, as described above, quantities exported influence export earnings as much as prices, there are many other factors that determine export earnings. Such factors include the type and destination of exports and, above all, the economic policies of the countries concerned.

It is thus difficult to generalize about the relation of foreign trade to economic growth. Many countries with very unstable exports have relatively stable national incomes; others whose exports are stable have highly unstable national incomes. The stimulus from exports will usually be stronger, for example, if the rate of demand for these exports is growing rapidly. Often, however, the transmission of growth to the nonexporting sector of the economy is impeded in less-developed countries by the economic, social, and political organization of the economy. It is important, for example, for some countries to try to decrease exports of goods that have a slowly growing demand and at the same time to try to increase exports of goods, such as minerals, for which world demand is growing more rapidly.

The uncertainty both for private producers and for governments resulting from sharp and sudden commodity price changes has resulted in many efforts to achieve greater stability on the market in primary goods.

In theory a country could insulate domestic producers against international price fluctuations through variable charges and subsidies, but politically it is difficult to tax away producers’ profits during a period of rising prices and to hold the resulting revenue in order to redistribute it should prices and profits fall.

In Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia, for instance, national marketing boards that attempted to even out price fluctuations of cocoa, cotton, and peanuts (groundnuts) were in operation before those countries became independent. In the former French territories in Africa, stabilization funds fixed producer prices and controlled margins and profits. The main dangers inherent in national stabilization schemes are inconsistent government policies and the excessive operating costs of the public bodies concerned. These factors explain the unsatisfactory results of many national price agencies.

In the 1920s international cartels were created for rubber, sugar, tin, and tea, but they yielded no lasting results. Nor did cooperation between the governments of exporting and importing countries (such as in the International Wheat Agreement of 1933 and the International Sugar Agreement of 1937) serve to attain the desired goals during the Great Depression. Of special significance among more recent attempts to raise and stabilize a commodity price has been the one made by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). (The special features of the oil market are considered below.) Other attempts to stabilize commodity prices since World War II have mainly assumed three forms—the multilateral contract agreement, the quota agreement, and the buffer-stock agreement. Transactions are effected at world market prices. When a minimum or a maximum price is reached or approached, efforts are made to ensure that prices remain within the two limits. Each of the three systems achieves this in a different way.

In the multilateral contract system, consumers and producers undertake to buy or sell a specified quantity of the commodity at agreed minimum and maximum prices, or at a price within the agreed range.

In the quota method, the quantity negotiated is determined by a previously fixed quota when a minimum or maximum price is exceeded. When there is a surplus, the producers restrict their exports or production; when there is a shortage, quotas are allotted to the consumer countries. With the buffer-stock method, stability is ensured by a combination of an export control arrangement and a buffer-stock arrangement. In certain circumstances exports are restricted by the controlling body. The buffer-stock agency buys when the market price is in the lower sector or at the floor price set out in the agreement; the buffer-stock agency sells when the market price is in the upper sector or at the ceiling price.

The utility of commodity agreements in general can hardly be judged on past experience. Experience with wheat, sugar, and tin agreements, which cover a comparatively long period, is not conducive to generalization. Some degree of stability, though at a high price level, was achieved in the case of wheat, but this was due to the dominant influence of U.S. and Canadian policies. In the case of tin, too, transactions for the U.S. strategic stockpile exerted an influence. Political factors (including the Cuban revolution) underlay the de facto suspension from 1962 to 1969 of the sugar agreement, which had covered, and still covers, only a limited share of the world market.

The value of world transactions in tin, wheat, coffee, and sugar amounts to only a small part of the value of the world’s entire commodity trade. Furthermore, the agreements in question do not cover all transactions. It is, in a way, understandable that only a few such agreements have been concluded; during a boom the producer countries are not inclined to conclude them, and during a depression there is little incentive for consumer countries to enter into them.