Drug selection: Mozambique

Whereas a few hundred generic drugs are essential for health care, the international and many national markets are flooded with tens of thousands of brand-name preparations. This numerical difference is because of the many imitative products, drug combinations, brandname duplications, and drugs with low therapeutic value and/or unacceptable adverse effects. Since independence Mozambique has reduced the number of registered products, including those for retail pharmacy sale, from some 26,000 to about 1200. An effective national formulary has been introduced for health service use and now contains only 343 distinct therapeutic substances. The formulary uses only international non-proprietary names, and has been used to rationalize state pharmaceutical procurement with cost savings and to improve drug information and use.     

Approximating the Effective Protection Coefficient without Reference to Technological Data

When proposals for reform of tariff or subsidy policies aremade, attempts to predict the effect on incentives are frequentlyhampered by the need for input-output technical data. This articledevelops and illustrates the use of a methodology for approximatingeffective protection coefficients (EPCs) when such data areunavailable or outdated. It derives the equations which approximatethe EPC from statistical analysis of a cross section of existingEPC studies for four agricultural commodities: corn, cotton,rice, and wheat. Informational requirements for computing approximationsinclude the nominal protection coefficients on output and tradableinputs and readily available macroeconomic data. These approximationequations perform well in an out-of-sample test.     

FINANCIAL STRESS AND CONSUMPTION EXPECTATIONS AMONG FARM HOUSEHOLDS: NEW ZEALAND'S EXPERIENCE WITH ECONOMIC LIBERALISATION

A review of New Zealand's experience with assistance to agriculture through the 1960s and 1970s and the subsequent deregulation of the sector in the mid-1980s provides background to this study. Data for sheep and beef farmers are used to elaborate the variety of financial changes in the boom and bust cycles that followed the policy changes. Changes in farm business stress are examined using some conventional financial ratios. New measures which partition household expenditure between consumption and investment are then developed. These better explain the stress experienced among farm households as a consequence of the readjustment process and provide insight to the impact of the legacy of debt, encouraged by government intervention, on farmers' current and expected household consumption over recent years. New Zealand's experience reveals that farm household consumption stress has been unevenly distributed. This suggests that policy concern, following the removal of government assistance to agriculture, should focus principally on the mitigation of the household distress caused by ongoing farm debt commitments.     

SAC 4 And The Challenge To The Mandatory Status Of Concepts Statements

This paper expresses no doubt about the worth of concepts statements such as Statement of Accounting Concepts SAC 4 Definition and Recognition of the Elements of Financial Statements, which spells out the essential characteristics of assets, liabilities, equity, revenues and expenses along with broad criteria for their recognition in financial statements. However, the authors have reservations about giving mandatory status to such a statement. It is, after all, but one piece of a conceptual framework and as the other pieces take shape they may call for alterations in the interpretation and operation of the elements. Without the benefit of the light which might be cast by reference to other concepts statements, SAC 4 in isolation could lead to undebated and questionable consequences, as well as supplying equivocal guidance on many important issues. This paper examines the reasons for unrest about the mandatory status of concepts statements.