ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF SAWMILL INDUSTRY IN ONDO STATE

Abstract

The study looked at the economic analysis of sawmill industry in Ondo State under three scale enterprises namely: small, medium and large. The study examined the socio economic characteristics profitability of the sawmill operators and the comparative analysis of the sawmills. It also investigated the productivity of the resources used with reference to elasticity of production and returns to scale. And finally, it examined the marketing channels for sawmill products in Ondo State. Data were collected from 86 sawmillers in six Local Government Area of Ondo State, using structured questionnaire, administered on respondents selected using simple random sampling technique. The data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics, budgetary analysis and production function analysis. The result showed that sawmill operation is profitable in Ondo State. The production function analysis shows that log for processing and labour were the most important factors in sawmill operations. Education, and experience had negative signs on their coefficients as against a priori expectation. The study thus recommends that educated sawmillers should pay more attention to the supervision of the sawmilling operations. Medium and large-scale enterprises, should watch their cost structure to reduce areas of waste while small and medium enterprises should expand their operation to make efficient use of labour available to them.