Economic effects of covid-19 restrictions on milk traders and their response in Gweri county and Soroti city

Abstract

Much of the attention from COVID-19 on milk traders had been on Western region most especially Mbarara but there has been a growing interest in issues pertaining to milk traders in Eastern Uganda Soroti district in particular, including the decline in sales volume, milk prices and expenditure. This work considers the economic effects of COVID-19 restrictions on milk traders and their response in Gweri county and Soroti city. Data on actual effects of COVID-19 and milk traders’ response was gathered from 82 milk traders and analyzed using SPSS, Stata and excel soft wares to establish these effects in three years 2020, 2021 and 2022 taking 2020 as the base year. Results indicate that 90.24% milk traders were affected by COVID-19 restrictions. Where 9.76% dropped out of the business during the COVID-19 restrictions, 75.61% had their sales volume reduced, 65.85% their transport costs increased, 67.07% reported decline in capital. Meanwhile their expenditure was affected. Further findings show that milk traders engaged in different activities, adopted other marketing and delivery strategies of selling their milk and use of SOPs as a way of responding to the effects of COVID-19 restrictions. The study then concluded that generally, there was a substantial increase in quantity of milk purchased, quantity sold, buying and selling price of milk, average monthly sales of and average monthly expenditure on milk, transport, and electricity throughout 2020, 2021 and 2022 regardless of the effects. It recommended that government should help small- and medium-sized milk traders mitigate short-terms of effects of causes related to COVID-19 via dedicated financial facilities, provide training or mentoring programs to help milk traders assess and manage the financial impact of the crisis, try digital and find new markets, provide subsidies to agri-food sectors that maintain activities during lockdown; implement price controls to reduce inflation on livestock commodities and extension services and trainings to expose dairy farmers on how to manage cattle for more milk yield. Key words: COVID-19, restrictions, trade and milk.