Monopolism versus Competition: Assessing Impacts on Export Capability (Comparative Study on Gum Arabic Export Merit)

Abstract

This study aims to examine the impact of key policy changes on the gum Arabic sector after Gum Arabic Company concession withdrawn. Focusing on attitude of production and export performance. It is an attempt to contribute to solve the problem of huge decline and fluctuation of Gum Arabic production and exports in last decay. This decline had led to drop in revenues. Many factors were behind this problem ; part of them are naturally as drought, and mainly are human made as lack of policies and strategies of both government and the Gum Arabic Company (GAC),which was monopolized gum Arabic exports till recent years. The main object of the study was to evaluate the impact of de-monopolism policy on gum export performance, and generally, the paper intended to conduct comparative study between monopolism and competition. The study has formulated some hypotheses, concluded to that; monopolism policy of gum export is ineffective. Data has conducted through questionnaire, personal meeting, records and observation. Statistical Package of Social Studies (SPSS) has used to test the hypotheses and get results. The results confirmed that, monopolism policy is ineffective and mainly caused in the drop of the exports revenue and lowered Sudan world market share.

Keywords: Gum Arabic, competition, monopolism, capability.