Production efficiency of agri-food industries in Tunisia intra-sectoral analysis

The agri-food sector plays a very important role in Tunisia from a social, economic and ecological point of view The enhancement of agricultural products represents an income and employment source Anyway, this sector has to cope with problems reducing its performance This work suggests the setting up of an empirical method to measure the production efficiency of the sector using a panel of agri-food industries The borderline approach of the stochastic production, which can bring about the productive performance of agri-food industries, is used as empirical framework order to determine their efficiency in the period 1983-2004 Results show that in Tunisia agri-food industries can be distinguished into two categories. according to the level of State intervention the subsidized (strategic) agri-food industries and the non-subsidized ones While the average value of the technical efficiency indices is nearly 0 478, in the case of subsidized industries it is 0 20 and m the case of non- subsidized firms it equals 0 60 Therefore. the subsidized firms ale less efficient, whereas the non-subsidized ones are the most efficient All this demonstrates the effect of the protection of agri-food industries on their level of production efficiency