DETERMINING THE CAMEROON’S COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE IN THE COFFEE EXPORT


Çakan V. A., Nsangou Pofoura A. M., Tipi T.

3rd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COFFEE & COCOA, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, 13 - 15 March 2023, pp.63-70

  • Publication Type: Conference Paper / Full Text
  • City: Rio De Janeiro
  • Country: Brazil
  • Page Numbers: pp.63-70
  • Bursa Uludag University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

Coffee, one of the main export products of Cameroon, is an important agricultural product for the country's economy. The main objective of this study is to examine Cameroon's coffee export and its comparative advantage in this area. For this purpose, the commonly used indexes in comparative advantage analysis such as Balassa index (RCA) and the Vollrath indexes, which are the Relative Export Advantage (RXA), logarithm of the Relative Export Advantage (lnRXA) and the Revealed Competitiveness (RC) indexes are used. In the study, calculations were made for the years 2008-2018 and the data used in the analysis are obtained from the TRADEMAP database. The results reveal that the Cameroonian coffee sector has a comparative advantage for each base year of all indicators taken into account. For the export of Cameroonian coffee, the average RCA for the period 2008-2018 is 16.61 while the average values calculated for RXA, lnRXA and RC, also known as Vollrath indexes, are respectively at the level 17.03, 2.74 and 9.13. Although the results obtained for each index considered are above the comparative advantage limit values for all the years examined, a significant decrease is observed in the values of the index. For example, while the calculated RXA value for 2008 was 32.11, the calculated value for this index in 2018 is 9.28. Therefore, it is important for the future of the coffee industry to investigate the reasons for this decline and to determine and eliminate the factors that negatively affect the comparative advantage of the coffee product.