Agricultural Productivity and technological gap between MENA ...

Total Factors ProductivityAverage Total Factors Productivity growth for the sample time is calculated for eachcountry of the two regions (Table .7). In MENA region, only Libya, Lebanon and Egypt haverealized positive average annual growth of TFP. Six countries out of twelve had more thanone percent cut in their TFP. Note that Jordan has endured a drastic TFP deterioration duringthe sample period (about 6 percent decrease per year). This situation is likely imputed towater availability problems since the 1967 war.In order to observe the spread of the gap separating the two regions during the sample period,country-average Total Factors Productivity are plotted in Figure .6 with 1972 as a base year.5. ConclusionThe paper provided a database of Total Factors Productivity growth, technical efficiency, andinput productivity for 12 MENA region’s countries and their potential competitors in term ofagricultural products into the European market. Using the metafrontier approach (Rao et al,2003), technical efficiency scores are corrected by the coefficient of technology gap sinceproduction technologies are different in the two regions. The effects of some salientdeterminants of technical efficiency are assessed in order to identify the reasons ofdiscrepancies between these two regions. It was shown that technological gap was the mainactor playing in favor of European countries. In other words, these countries are operatingnear the possibilities’ frontier of the meta-technology. Despite this handicap, a cutch-upprocess is observed between the two regions in term of technical efficiency.TFP growth for each country in each year in the two regions was defined as the sum ofpredicted change in the production frontier in that vicinity plus predicted change in technicalefficiency for that country and year. The Battese-Coelli approach was used to estimate theefficiency effects of a set of institutional, trade, and other efficiency-changing variables, withthe production frontier specified as tranlog flexible form. We found that literacy rate irrigatedarea and agricultural exports have a considerable effect on efficiency alleviation in MENAregion. Wars and civil conflicts have considerably reduced agricultural performances ofseveral countries in the sample such as Iraq, Iran and Lebanon. The model adopted wasreshaped to account for the effect of Wars and civil conflicts on both frontier and technicalefficiency. That is, Wars and civil conflicts reduce the access to technology and induceoperators to be less efficient.In conducting, this study has characterized the current situation in MENA countries in term ofproductivity and efficiency. It is worth to examine the implementation of the Vision to Actionstrategy in MENA, develop a series of lessons learned from this work among others and thendesign strategies and policies for the development of of MENA’s “rural space,” which is thebase of the agricultural sector. The strategies and policies should grant a great deal of interestto natural resource management, rural transport, water and sanitation, telecommunication,education, health and other social services.- Rationalize water management and policies: Water is a precious and increasingly scarcecommodity in MENA region. Countries in the region should design a common policy inirrigation, water policy, water demand management, and water resource allocation. Closelyrelated to water are all the issues dealing with sustainable use of natural resources.- Improve access to social and economic infrastructure.12