COMPETITION PRESSURE AND AGRO-PROCESSING： FIRM LEVEL EVIDENCE FROM UGANDA, TANZANIA AND KENYA

It is clear from the literature that increasing competitive pressure triggers a range of-firm responses depending on the market structure. One of the potential responses is the introduction of new products as-firms strive to survive the product market competition pressure. In this paper, we check the plausibility of this assertion on the agro-processing sector in the three East African Community （EAC） countries of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. We exploit -firm level data from the Enterprise surveys conducted by the Worm Bank during 2006--07. The revelation from the data is that agro- processing firms in the three countries introduced new products in the face of heightened competitive pressure potentially driven by reforms undertaken since the mid 1990s.