수입곡물 가공 산업의 구조 및 시장성과 분석-식품소재 산업을 중심으로-

Abstract

밀, 옥수수 콩 등의 수입곡물은 제분, 정분당, 채유 산업 등의 기초식품소재 산업이나 배합사료 산업의 원료 곡물로 사용된다. 따라서 국제곡물가격 급등락 영향은 이들 식품소재 산업 및 제빵, 국수, 라면, 과자 등의 2차 식품가공 산업을 통하여 소비자 물가에 영향을 미치거나 배합사료를 통해 축산물에 전이되어 육류, 유제품, 계란 등의 축산품 물가에 영향을 미치게 된다. 수입곡물은 관련 산업 및 소비자 물가에서의 중요성과 2007~08년의 애그플래이션을 계기로 곡물 국제가격이 급등함에 따라 국제곡물시장 및 관련 국내 산업에 관한 국민적 관심이 크게 증대하였다.수입곡물에 대한 국민적 관심이 증대함에 따라 국제곡물 수급 및 시장에 대한 다양한 연구가 진행되어왔다. 그러나 이러한 기존연구는 식량안보 및 안정적 식량자원 확보라는 측면에서 대부분 국제곡물시장에서의 수급과 안정적 식량자원 확보라는 주제에 한정되어 왔다. 본 연구는 수입곡물을 직접 수입하는 기초식품소재 산업과 배합사료 산업에서 경제적 효율성을 달성할 수 있는 방향을 제시하고 있다는 데 의미가 있다.

Background and Objective The self-sufficiency rates of Korea for wheat, corn, and soybean are 0.7%, 0.8%, 9.4% respectively so Korea depends on imported grain for almost all domestic consumption. Hence international grain prices have great influence on domestic food prices and the whole Korean economy through not only the food processing industry such as wheat milling, corn and soybean processing but also animal feed industries. When we consider the importance of the food and livestock industry and the influence on domestic food prices, securing grain import quantity and appropriate management of price fluctuation risk in the international grain markets are very important national interests. There have been various efforts in Korea for securing grain import and stabilizing domestic food prices because of the importance and jumps in international grain prices in 2007~08 year, which created a newly-coined word, ‘agflation.’ However, despite these efforts, the concerns on securing grain import, price transmission and efficiency of related domestic industries continued with the repetition of international grain prices’ sudden rise. Despite the importance and national interests as stated above, the researches on the domestic grain processing industries and the influence of international grain markets on domestic food markets are very limited. Although, with the 2007~08 year’s sudden rise of international grain prices, many researches on the international grain supply and demand have been carried out, most of these researches focused on food security and securing food resource issues. Hence the researches on the domestic influence of international grain price level and volatility changes, that is, the whole value chain of imported grain industries, are very few. This research identifies problems and draws improvement directions for imported grain processing industries by an analysis of grain purchase, related regulations and policies, industry structure and performance. Concretely, in the view of increasing market efficiency, this study analyzes the market structure and performance of wheat, corn starch/glucose and soybean oil processing industries which directly import and primarily process grains. Research Method We divide this research into two areas: food material industries which use imported grain for the first year study and mixed feed industries for the second year study because the structure and market players of each industry are very different and both of the industries have their own various issues. This report is for the first year study, that is, food material industries. This first year study conducts price transmission analysis, industry productivity level comparison analysis and market power parameter estimation using quantitative econometric methods in addition to literature reviews and analysis of import regulation and government policy. Based on the above-mentioned analysis and the view of industrial organization theories, this study conducts market structure and performance analysis for the wheat flour, corn starch/glucose, and cooking oil markets. Furthermore this study draws implications through comparing food processing market conditions and performances of Japan and Taiwan which also depend on most of imported grains for their processing grain consumption to those of Korea. Results and Implications Considering the great impacts of the food material industry and food price level, the Korean government have maintained import tariffs of food grains very low. That is, while the Japanese government have set very high import tariffs of grains and monopolized grain imports to protect domestic agriculture, Korea has carried out price stabilization policy through trade liberalization. The industrial organization theory says that good market performance can be achieved under oligopolistic market structure through competition pressure from potential competitors and buying power of front industries. Buying power and potential competition pressure can be reinforced by strengthening information openness and improving information accuracy. The competition pressure can play an important role for improving market performance without visible competitors. We can see that pattern of price transmission in the Japanese wheat milling industry is much better than that in the Korean wheat milling industry. This can be an example of good market performance under imperfect market structure and this also means that market performance of Korean imported grain processing industries has some room to be improved. Wheat milling, corn starch/glucose and cooking oil markets have oligopolistic market structure with the 3 biggest firms’ very high market shares (CR3: 74.1%, 86.0%, 62.8% respectively) which reach or exceed the criteria of the Fair Trade Act for dominant market players. But the proportion of business-to-business sales on big firms which have bargaining power is of importance and business profit rates of firms are not high when compared with the average profit rate of whole manufacturing industries. In sum, this research concludes that the three markets are all oligopolistic competitive which means market function works relatively well under oligopolistic structure. Despite these conclusions, the three markets show slightly different competition strength. While the corn starch/glucose market has a relatively high market concentration ratio and business profit rates, the entry barrier to the cooking oil market which includes the soybean processing industry is relatively low because small players can enter the market easily by the form of resale firms that import raw oil directly without huge squeezing facilities. Hence we think the competition of the cooking oil market is stronger than that of the corn starch/glucose market. Based on the results above mentioned, we propose four improvement directions to make domestic primary grain processing industries economically efficient. Firstly, strengthening market function should be a main measure to improve market performance in the primary grain processing industry. Because government’s direct regulation and intervention cause side effects necessarily, market can be a good alternative of government controls for achieving economic efficiency. In addition, the results of this research indicate that the domestic primary grain processing industry has the foundation for market competition. Hence we conclude markets are more efficient measures than government regulation for improving market performance in the industry. Secondly, openness of information through accounting separation should be required to the primary grain processing industries. Because the industries have benefited from almost zero import tariff rates for stabilizing food prices, it should be proved that the original object of the benefit has been achieved. That is, because most of firms in the industries do other business but detailed accounting information is not made public, it is difficult to make conclusion for the market performance of the three industries. Thirdly, the accuracy of market information should be improved and promoting the information should be strengthened. The cost structure of the grain processing industries can be easily understood just by comparing movements of import grain prices and final product prices because the share of raw material grain in total cost is very high. But it is known that the final product prices are inaccurate because it is difficult for firms to increase the price in response to the price increase factors due to government price management policy which has been carried out until now and social pressure. Lastly, periodic checks should be carried out on the status of market competition for the products from primary imported grain processing industries. Imported grain processing industries have already been liberalized and have been operated by the principle of market. But there is still concern about abuse of market power because of oligopolistic market structure of the industries. Therefore, it is necessary to review the competition status of the market. Researchers: Kim Jongjin, Seung Junho, Kim Jiyeon, Choi Sunwoo and Lim KwontaekResearch period: 2016. 1. ~ 2016. 12.E-mail address: jkim@krei.re.kr