Free competition without sustainable development? Tanzanian cotton sector liberalisation, 1994/95 to 1997/98

This article summarises the results of fieldwork carried out in 1997/8 season on post-liberalisation changes in the Tanzanian cotton sector. Developments in primary marketing, ginning and the export trade are reviewed on the basis of survey material. Market entry by private companies has been high, leading to considerable competition and slight increases in producers' share of the world price. But real producer price and cultivation increases have not been sustained. Following changes in the input supply system, insecticide use has fallen sharply, along with the quality and underlying international price of the cotton crop. Tanzania's place in the world market has been re-defined as a producer for a specific time-based 'market window'. This places a question mark over the sustainability of the sector's future, and by inference over policy reforms whose main emphasis is to increase competition.