Recent seminar with Dr. Richard Pomfret

 “The agricultural sector in Kazakhstan experienced declining output throughout the 1990s, partly because relative prices shifted from being distorted in favour of farmers to being distorted against them. Only after the end of the decade did public policy shift towards support for agriculture.

This support was boosted by a billion-dollar Agriculture and Food Program for 2003-5 which was made possible by booming oil revenues,” says Dr. Richard Pomfret,  a Professor of Economics at the University of Adelaide, Australia and a Visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Bologna Center in Italy in his recent paper: ‘Using Energy Resources to Diversify the Economy: Agricultural Price Distortions in Kazakhstan’. Dr. Pomfret presented the paper at the CASE Policy Research Seminar on 4 December. He estimated producer support equivalents for the main agricultural products in Kazakhstan since 1990, and analyzed the consequences of shifts in farm support policy.

 Picture: Richard Pomfret (by Robin Mills, News from the University of Adelaide)