Analysis of tomato prices in the main markets of the southern region of Mozambique in the period between 2015 to 2019

Abstract

Tomato is a highly perishable product and susceptible to extreme temperatures. In the process of marketing of this product, it has been verified great losses by the producers of this crop, in some cases the product deteriorates in the production field for lack of market, and in other cases it deteriorates in the market for excess production. In order to help the producers, the present work analyses the tomato prices behaviour in the main markets of the southern region of Mozambique. The data used in this paper were made available by SIMA. The price series were disaggregated in monthly terms, were linearized and comprise the time period from January 2015 to December 2019, totaling 60 observations in each market of the southern region of Mozambique. We used the Classical Time Series Decomposition using Microsoft Office Excel 2007, in which the graphs were produced. Through IBM SPSS Statistics 21 mean comparisons were made using ANOVA table. The results show that throughout the year there is a significant seasonal variation in tomato prices in the main markets of the southern region of Mozambique, both in terms of provinces and in terms of the markets that constitute each province. In this analysis, other variables that can influence the price, such as product quality, distance from the production field to the market, market size, were kept constant, but should be considered in the decision making process in opting or not for a particular market.