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Analysis of government rural infrastructural spending and its effects on output of cereals in Benue State Nigeria: 1990-2012

Abstract

Ater PI, Ayoola JB, Chancha TE

This study analyzed effects of government rural infrastructural spending on output of cereals in Benue state of Nigeria for 23years usingvector error correction model (VECM). The result revealed that, Government spending on health in the previous year was positive to output of maize and significant with a coefficient of 3.39% in the long-run. However, this contrasted with educational and Road infrastructures with negative coefficients of -3.38 and -1.01 respectively. This was exclusive of output of millet with a negative coefficient of (-2.3095) for health and a positive coefficient of (0.84 and 0.38) for road and educational infrastructures respectively. The long-run effects of rural infrastructure on output of Sorghum revealed same response with that of millet for both government spending on, Education, health and Roads with negative coefficient of (-2.6039, -0.1826, -0.7189) respectively. Short-run analysis of rural infrastructural spending on output of maize revealed that, the coefficient [-0.54] of maize output in the previous year was negative and significant at 10%. Short-run effect of infrastructural spending on output of millet revealed that, coefficient [0.053] of government spending on roads two years ago was positive and significant at 5% probability level. In contrast, the coefficient [-0.507] of output of millet in the previous year was negative contrary to the a priori expectation and significant at 5% probability level. Short-run analysis of sorghum revealed that government spending on health in the previous year and two years ago were positive and significant at 1% with coefficients [0.397, 0.516] respectively. In contrast, spending on both education and road in previous year and two years ago gave a negative coefficients at 1% significant level as [-0.5070, -0.53,-0.1823, -0.36770] respectively. Based on findings of empirical analysis, the study recommends; that, policy makers should pay closer attention to improved spending on rural infrastructures.

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