Livestock Services and the Poor: A global initiative - IFAD

44
LIVESTOCK SERVICES AND THE POOR
Poverty reduction
is in the public
interest
Public and private roles in service delivery
The responsibility for a certain task depends on the nature of that
task. Umali et al. (1994) propose a model for the division of
roles between the public and private sectors in the delivery
of veterinary services. In principle, the services, which are
essentially private goods because the individual users capture
all the benefits, should be supplied by the private sector. Key
private goods involved in livestock service delivery include
clinical veterinary services, most vaccinations, the sale of
pharmaceuticals, artificial insemination and other breeding
services, feed and fodder inputs and most financial services. For
services that benefit an entire community, such as vaccinations
against the most contagious diseases, sanitation and quality
control, the public sector should intervene. Advisory services and
training are in principle private good services but with less
immediate benefit for the users, the public sector therefore need
to intervene to facilitate the development.
This document argues that poverty reduction is a public good and
that the public sector needs to intervene, especially to provide
an enabling environment and to promote regulations and
monitoring so that the services reach the poor.
The quality of services depends to a large extent on who
the service provider is responsible and accountable to and how
the income of the service provider is related to the results that the
users are to achieve.
Table 2.1 offers an overview of the main service providers, the
authority that supervises them and their income sources.
Sometimes, the responsibilities are unclear, and users become
tied up in other types of dependency relationships, as in the
poultry model in Bangladesh, where microcredit and technical
services are delivered as packages by the same NGO.
A changing environment
In most developing countries, government institutions
traditionally run the livestock services, but this is rapidly