A forthcoming report from the International Food Policy Research Institute analyzes protection to the agricultural sector in India, Indonesia, China and Vietnam. The study calculates commodity-specific market-price support (MPS) and producer support estimates (PSEs) for each country.

According to an abstract of the as-yet unpublished study, governments in all four countries relaxed their grip on agriculture during the 1985-2002 period, moving from state-led policies that aimed to keep food prices low and promote food self-sufficiency, to greater integration with the world market.

The study looks at 11 commodities in India, and finds agricultural support rose in response to low world prices and dipped when world prices were high. Input subsidies have risen in India in the period 1985-2002.

Analysis on China is limited to the 1995-2001 period, over which its agricultural policies were almost neutral: "neither protection or disprotection."

Vietnam, like China, opened up its economy in the 1990s, "and there has been a shift from an import-substitution strategy toward export promotion, with decreasing disprotection turning to positive protection overall."

Indonesia has subsidized agriculture since the 1990s, and provides the most consistent support, particularly to food crops. While support was interrupted during the Asian financial crisis (1997-98), it soon returned to pre-crisis levels and then increased in the early parts of 2000.

An abstract of the study is available on-line at: http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/abstract/152/ab152.pdf