Role of Government in the provision of livestock services:
An examination of the Livestock Advisory Centre
Malope, P., Mmopelwa, D. and Bhata, S.
Conference on Policies for Competitive Smallholder Livestock Production
Gaborone, Botswana, 4-6 March 2015

Structure of Presentation
Introduction and objectives
Methodological approach
Results and discussion
Conclusion and policy implications

Introduction
• Vet. Services earmarked for privatisation in 2000
• Provision of AHS done by the LAC and private
• 2008 an attempt to offload some services to private
sector but reverted back because of complains by
famers
• LAC offer a number of services such as sale of
vaccines and drugs; supplements and animal
equipment

Objectives
• Aim is to determine as to whether the public sector
provision of animal health services is crowding out
the private sector.
• The specific objectives are:
• To critically examine the services offered by the
LAC and determine those that could best be
provided by the public sector or the private sector
for both efficiency and effectiveness.
• To identify factors influencing the choice a supplier
for both livestock services and clinical services
(AHS).

Definitions
• Private good – consumption is rival and
excludable
• Public good – consumption is non-rival and non-
excludable
• Welfare economics – in the absence of
externalities, public goods, informational failure
and economies of scale the private sector is the
most efficient way of organising delivery of
services.
• But in instances where these are present the
public sector must step in

Services provided & their
economic attributes
Service Public Private Economic
attribute
Animal
drug/vaccine
distribution
√ √ Private good
Animal equipment √ √ Private good
Supplementary
feeds
√ √ Private good

Utilisation of AHS
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
LAC Only Private Both

Choice of a service provider
• 94 % indicated LAC as first point of contact because
• 72% its cheap
• 13% its reliability
• 8% close proximity
• Private
• 55% reliability
• 27% quality

Price comparison
Item LAC PRIVATE DIFFERENTIAL
Botulism (20 doses) 115.8 150 -34 (30)
DCP 253.4 361.01 -107.69 (42)
Drought pellets 132.8 166.01 -33.21(25)
Burdizzo (large) 472 717 -245.07 (52)
Syringe metal (Auto) 316.65 400.51 -85.86 (26)

Regression results – choice of a
supplier
• Older farmers most likely to use LAC
• More educated farmers likely to use private
• Herd size increases the likelihood of using LAC
• Incidence of reported cases increases the likely hood of
use of LAC
• Farmers Views
• 87% LAC should continue selling as it is
• 12.8 LAC should be closed and private sector take its
role

Conclusions
• LAC offer services that are private in nature and hence
stifles the development of the private sector
• DVS supports offloading the LAC
• There are areas where the private sector can not
operate because of profitability
• Private sector concentrated in urban areas where there
is demand
• Efforts to privatise should consider marginal areas as
the private sector can not operate in those areas

THANK YOU