An Analysis of Price Behavior of Major Poultry Products in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Taking its overall importance to the economy, as a whole, including food and nutrition security and better performance of the food supply chain from producer to the consumer, the successive governments tend to take a variety of initiatives to upkeep the sustainability of agri-food supply system, but the scarcity of valid and reliable information on the behavior of prices makes it challenging for policymakers to have timely economic decisions. This study attempts to examine the behavior of prices of major poultry products, including chicken (broiler and curry) and eggs (brown and white) on the justifi cation that which have become regular food items in Sri Lankan menus overtime and the total chicken and egg production in Sri Lanka has increased markedly by about 45.3 and 64.5 percent, respectively, during the period of 2003 to 2012. The time-series data were taken up with advanced econometrics models on price analysis, including the ARIMA and SARIMA models which provide effi cient forecasts of weekly real prices of diff erent poultry products. It founds that the increasing trend apparent in nominal prices was due to rising infl ation of the economy, and the real prices of these products stagnated overtime.