ABSTRACT

The study analyzed price spread in the marketing of rice in Abia State, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling procedure was employed to select the 90 marketers from both urban and rural area respectively, making a total of 180 sample size needed for the study. The research has been carried out using descriptive analytical tools; such as mean, frequencies, percentage and inferential statistics (such as correlation and multiple regression analysis). The result on the socioeconomic characteristics indicates there was no gender disparity in rice marketing among the rural marketers as both male and female accounted for 50% each. The mean ages were 44 and 43 years for rural and urban marketers respectively. Average net return realized in a month were N62,905.67 and N 516,350.82 for rural and urban marketers The analysis revealed that the markets had positive price spread of one ton of rice is N 8930.53 and N 3065.31 for rural and urban market respectively. The Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) used to ascertain the level of market integration between urban and rural markets showed that there is strong and significant relationship between price of rice in rural and urban market (0.7433**). Ordinary least square OLS estimate shows that the coefficient of education, experience, capital cost (depreciations) and purchase cost were the significant variables affecting marketing price of the rice in rural area while the coefficient of education, experience, assembling cost, capital cost (depreciations) and purchase cost were the significant variables affecting marketing price of the rice in the urban area. Furthermore, high cost of transportation (4.77), lack of government subsidy (4.76) and seasonal price variation (4.71) were the critical problem for rice marketing in urban markets. While lack of government subsidy was ranked first (4.71), followed by Seasonal price variation (4.61) and high cost of transportation (4.57) were the critical problem for rice marketing in rural markets. This wide price spread across different markets could be attributed to inadequate information dissemination among marketers about the price of rice in different markets. This wide price spread across different markets could be attributed to inadequate information dissemination among marketers about the price of rice in different markets. The study also recommends that; national price policy should be mounted rather than regional price policy; in case of growing integration of the markets.