P. Konandreas - Trade Policy Responses to Food Price Volatility in Poor Net Food-Importing Countries
Figure 7. Cereal import bills of LDCs and NFIDCs
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Source: Compiled by the author based on FAO data
The increase in the cost of cereal imports has been much more pronounced than that of the quantities imported, especially in recent years in view of soaring food prices. Thus, for LDCs while the aggregate volume of commercial cereal imports increased by less than three times during the period under review, their cereal import bill increased by over six times during the same period. Similar sharp increases in the cereal import bill have been experienced by the NFIDCs, with a volume increase by
about 70 percent and a cereal import bill nearly quadrupling. The combined effects of an increasing volume concurrent with an increasing import price have been responsible for these trends. In order to ďŹ nd out how volumes and prices have affected the cereal import bills of different countries, the growth in the cereal import bills of individual countries have been decomposed to a volume effect and a price