The Efficiency of Hard Wood Industry in Ondo State, Nigeria

Wood furniture industry is an important manufacturing sector in Nigeria for its significant contributions to the growth of national economy and industrialization as well as livelihood of the furniture makers. Therefore, evaluating efficiency of hard wood industry is important to provide useful information about the business to the furniture makers and to assist the policy makers to design appropriate policies in supporting furniture production in Nigeria. The specific objectives of this research were to describe socio-economic characteristics of furniture makers, estimate efficiency of furniture makers, determine the profitability of furniture production, identify factors influencing efficiency of furniture making and examine the problems associated with furniture makings in the study area. The study adopted a multistage sampling procedure. Data were collected from seventy furniture makers through a well-structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, budgetary analysis, Cobb Douglas stochastic frontier production function, inefficiency model and relative importance index were used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that 75.7% of the respondents obtained some levels of formal education; 4.3% of the furniture makers were single; 71.4% had no access to credit facility; and 7.1% exported their products beyond the boundary of Nigeria. The estimated gross margin and net profit of #7,041,255.09 (US $16,959.52) and #4,261,542.89 (US $10,264.33) respectively revealed that furniture production is profitable. The efficiency results showed that 27% of furniture makers were most technically efficient; 5.7% of them were most allocative efficient; and 10% of them were most economically efficient. Stochastic frontier production function analysis showed that firm size, labour and fixed assets had a positively significant influence on furniture production. The only identified socio-economic characteristics of furniture makers that had significant influence on efficiency of furniture production were educational level, operating experience and reinforcement training in the study area. The two critical constraints facing furniture making in the ranking scale were fluctuation of wood price and inadequacy of funds.