Policy Issues and Trade Potential of Coconut: A Global Outlook

Policymakers and planners from the world’s coconut-growing nations face formidable challenges from the liberalization of the coconut sector’s marketing and trade regimes. At a time when the global coconut industry is confronting numerous difficult problems such as low productivity, pest and disease outbreaks, price swings, unstable domestic marketing systems, a recession in the trade sector, and so on, this is especially true. Topics covered in this chapter include the current state of affairs in coconut sector on a global scale, the difficulties encountered by the world’s leading coconut-producing nations, the state of international trade, the level of global competitiveness, the analysis of prices, and the outlook for the future of the global coconut economy. The analysis utilized various data sources, including the UN Comtrade database, Statistical Year Book of International Coconut Community, and regional data sets. The high level of concentration in the production, exports, and imports of the coconut sector indicates that the sector is highly vulnerable to even minor disruptions in supply and market conditions.