Presented by Malope, P., Mmopelwa, D. and Bhata, S. at the Conference on Policies for Competitive Smallholder Livestock Production, Gaborone, Botswana, 4-6 March 2015
Role of Government in the provision of livestock services: An examination of the Livestock Advisory Centre
1. 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
3. 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
4. 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).
5. 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
6. Services provided & their
economic attributes
Service Public Private Economic
attribute
Animal
drug/vaccine
distribution
√ √ Private good
Animal equipment √ √ Private good
Supplementary
feeds
√ √ Private good
8. 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
10. 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
11. 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