Economic study of Sugar consumption in Saudi Arabia and Alhasa Governorate

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Abstract

Sugar has great importance in food security components, as an individual gets about 13% calories daily. K.S.A depends on sugar imports to make the sugar quantities needs available, which caused a load on the payments balance. This research targeted studying sugar consumption determinants in K.S.A during the period (2000-2012), and sugar consumption in Alhasa. It adopted on descriptive analysis and some statistical analysis. Which depended on secondary and primary data, using a random sample of Saudi Families in Alhasa. The study found that the sugar consumption in the Kingdom has increased at annual rate about 3.9%, and consumption per capita increased with annual rate 0.9%. It indicated that the population growth rate was greater than sugar per capita consumption growth rate. That means the increasing rate of population has a greatest impact on the total sugar consumption increasing. It cleared that about 95% of the changes in the Kingdom consumption of sugar due to the retail prices, sugar individual consumption and total consumption of coffee. The variation statistical results cleared that there was significant differences between the average amounts of monthly capita sugar consumption in Income different levels. It cleared the weakness of sugar income and expenditure elasticity which goes around about 0.176, 0.192, respectively. This means that sugar is one of the necessary goods in Alhasa. The study showed the positive effect of family numbers on sugar consumption and monthly household expenditure. The study recommended rationalizing the consumption of sugar to match with the globally recommended Key Words: Dummy variable, Expenditure elasticity.Expenditure on sugar, Income elasticity, Sugar demand
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