International Commodity Prices, Exchange Rates, and Producer Prices
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coffee in Uganda and Vietnam; tea and coffee in Kenya; and cashew in Mozambique. Following this, the co-movement of international and producer prices is examined.1
Data Description International prices for the five sample commodities are from the Global Economic Monitor (GEM 2010). International prices are denominated in U.S. dollars and converted to real local currency unit (LCU) equivalents using nominal exchange rates and either CPIs or GDP deflators. The choice is driven by the series availability and is consistent with the subsequent case studies presented in this volume.2 Exchange rates, CPIs, and GDP deflators are from World Bank world development indicators (WDI 2010). Export prices for the 12 country/commodity combinations are unit export values from the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (COMTRADE 2010), as reported by trading partners. Partner data provide more reliable estimates for the SSA countries in the sample, whereas for the sample Asian countries partner-reported and ownreported data are very similar. Unit export values from COMTRADE (2010) provide inconsistent estimates for those years with low export volumes. Export prices for Zambia cotton, for instance, are unreliable for this reason. Export prices for China cotton and India cotton have also been found to be inconsistent. Therefore, for the following analysis, international prices are used, leaving an analysis of export prices to the Annex. This chapter’s primary source for producer prices is Anderson and Valenzuela (2008), although alternative data sources were identified during the case studies. The producer prices of cotton in Zambia; tea, tobacco, and cashew in Tanzania; and tea and coffee in Kenya are from local sources in the respective countries. For the other coffee-producing countries in the sample, we use International Coffee Organization (ICO 2010) producer prices. China and India cotton producer prices from Anderson and Valenzuela (2008) are extended using the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations statistical database (FAOSTAT 2010). The Mozambique cashew producer price series from Anderson and Valenzuela (2008) is extended with data from local sources. Producer price series cover the period from 1990 through 2008, with the exception of coffee in Vietnam. In this instance, producer price data do not go beyond 2004. Producer prices are expressed in LCUs and deflated by