Our hands are tied!

Our hands are tied! Cue: You might not think that farmers and governments have much in common. After all, you don?t see many farmers being driven around in expensive cars, nor do you see many government ministers sweating in the fields. But one thing that farmers and governments do have in common is that their opportunities and decisions are often highly controlled by outside institutions and regulations. In Cameroon, for example, the government?s freedom to make and implement policies has been heavily influenced by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, known as the IMF. Under pressure from these global institutions Cameroon has transformed its national economy, from a centrally-planned system run by the government, to one where market forces rule the day. This has had some profound effects on agricultural productivity, not least for the small-scale farmers. To find out more, Martha Chindong visited the Ministry of Agriculture in Yaound‚, and spoke to Syxtus Nuza, a ministry representative. She began by asking him to explain the economic change that had occurred in Cameroon. IN: ?Well for some time now ?? OUT: ??way it is supposed to do.? DUR?N 4?49? BACK ANNOUNCEMENT: Martha Chindong reporting from the Ministry of Agriculture in Yaound‚, Cameroon. Transcript Nuza Well for some time now, we?ve been trying our hand in what we call a liberalised economy. Before 1990, we were in what we call a centrally planned economy, where government fixed the prices of agricultural products to allow the urban people, mostly civil servants, to be able to buy food. But in a liberalised economy, all these other price fixing mechanisms have been taken off. It is just a question of supply and demand; government is no longer giving support to the farming population. And so government has withdrawn from most of the production sectors. Before that we used to have the fertilizer sub-sector which the government used to subsidise. We had government seed multiplication farms, this is no longer the case, and the government ...