Ouagadougou, August 9 2011 -- In response to a growing demand for strengthened capacity in price risk management for the cotton industry, the World Bank’s Agricultural Risk Management Team (ARMT) is delivering price risk management training to the cotton sector of Burkina Faso.
The Cotton Price Risk Management course, funded by the European Union’s All African Caribbean and Pacific Agricultural Commodities Programme (AAACP), is being held August 9-11 in Ougadougou. Approximately seventy participants from the cotton sector in Burkina Faso and eight other West and Central African countries are attending the training.
The course aims to help participants better understand and quantify price risk and acquire the knowledge and tools required to better manage the effects of volatile prices. It is designed to educate cotton market participants about the risk of unmanaged price exposure and the means for managing such exposure. The training in risk assessment and physical risk management strategies should assist attendees in understanding how to better manage price risk through increased understanding of the causes of price risk exposure, as well as the means for mitigating such risk.
"It is fantastic, that due to the financial support provided by the European Union’s All African Caribbean and Pacific Agricultural Commodities Programme (AAACP) we are able to deliver price risk management training to the Burkina Faso cotton sector,” said Marc Sadler, Team Leader, of the World Bank’s Agricultural Risk Management Team. “We hope that the training will assist the course participants in better managing the price risk exposure that they face."
For Wilfried Yaméogo, Permanent Secretary in charge of the monitoring of the liberalized cotton sector, this training promises to be enriching: “The volatility of the prices of agricultural commodities, and specifically cotton fiber, is a major risk with actors of the cotton sector,” Said M. Yaméogo. “The beneficiaries of this training will have the opportunity to become more familiar with the underlying factors accounting for the volatility of the price of cotton fiber as well as with physical and financial instruments they can use to address this volatility.”
Training materials are based on the experience gained by the World Bank and its partners through its activities in the area of price risk management.
