Determinants of livestock products export in Ethiopia

Ethiopia has one of the largest livestock populations in Africa. In 2016-2017, the share of live animals, leather, and meat in the total export of the country reached 9.6%. This paper aims to identify the determinants of the export of Ethiopian livestock products by means of vector autoregressive and vector error correction models. Multivariate time series is used to model the association between the products of the Ethiopian livestock export included in the study. Vector autoregressive and vector error correction models are used for modelling and inference. The results indicated the existence of a long term correlation between the volume of live animals, meat and leather exports. The volume of meat export is significantly affected by a lag occurring in the export of live animals in the short-run. Therefore, 3.7% of the shortrun imbalance in the volume of leather export is adjusted each quarter. It is suggested that the exporters of livestock products should properly utilise the Ethiopian livestock resources. On the other hand, the government should offer different forms of support to exporters, especially those focusing on exporting value-added products.