Market Efficiency and Price Spread in Jaipur District, India

Abstract

“Price  spread  or farm  retail spread”  is  the  difference  between  the price paid by the consumers and the price received by the producer for an equivalent  quantity  of  farm  produce.  Sometime, this is called as gross marketing margin. The  marketing  margin  refers  to  the difference  between  the  price received  by  seller  at  a  particular  stage  of  marketing  and  the  price  paid by him at preceding stage of marketing during an earlier period. The  producer’s  net  share,  total  marketing  costs,  total  marketing margins,  consumer’s  price  and  price  spread  in  channel-III  are  given in Table 3. Table 3 reveals that, out of price of Rs 5765.00 per quintal paid by consumer,  chickpea  producer  got Rs 5102.00  per  quintal  which  accounted for  88.50  percent  share.  The  share  of  marketing  costs  paid  by  chickpea-producer, wholesaler-cum-commission agent  and  retailer  was  1.37,  2.05 and 0.49 percent of total consumer’s price, respectively. Total share of wholesaler-cum-commission agent was highest followed by chickpea-producer and retailer. Thus, total share of marketing cost of intermediaries in consumer’s price was 3.90 percent Agarwal et al 2015, Hazari et al. 2015.  Total  margin  earned  by middlemen, wholesaler-cum-commission agent and retailers was 5.60 and 1.94  percent  of  price  paid  by  consumer.  Wholesaler earned more as compare to retailer. So, total share of   market   intermediaries in consumer’s price was 7.55 percent.  Price spread in channel –I was Rs 660.00 per quintal which was 11.45 percent of consumer’s price Chavhal et al. 2014, Khorne 2014, Bondare et al .2014 and Kumar 2014.