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Having gained some capital and experience in the "gift fair" market, many
entrepreneurs subsequently moved from supplying foreign demand to supplying
domestic demand, importing foodstuffs and construction materials, competing with
Eti and the co-operative organisation. Trade in domestic supply implies increased
commitment and faith by locai capital in the locai market. Returns on new
investment depends on local consumption spending and stock requires more fixed
capital commitment (imported electronic goods do not require réfrigération and are
more portable and potentially liquid than a similar value of perishables or
construction materials). As the private sector increased its share of this new market,
the Co-operative Central Bank's and Eti's share fell. It was, however, a declining
share of a growing market, suggesting that the private sector was responding to
continued shortages.
Despite the preferences of the dominant politicians in the north, many sectors of the
economy have not encouraged private entrepreneurial activity. In the dairy industry
prices have been controlied, as they were, largely, in the fodder industry; this
makes the prospects of a profitable return for a local entrepreneur less likely. The
co-operative and the "state" sector dominate these markets. Fixed prices stili exist in
sheep and cattle fodder, so the "state" and the CTCCB provide for almost 100% of
the industrially produced fodder market. In the parts of the market not regulated,
where prices are not fixed, private sector activity has taken off. In the late 1980s,
the private sector moved into poultry fodder production, to the extent that the
largest single producer of poultry fodder is now a local entrepreneur, Mastafa Hadji
Ali Enterprises, who began production in 1988, originally to satisfy his own
demand (he is also the largest fresh chicken producer in the "TRNC"). Seemingly,
where profits are not constrained by price controls, the private sector has developed
capital and managerial resources to exploit locai market opportunities, successfully
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