The name is absent

A total of 85 firms were surveyed in Gabon and 57 in Chad. Firms were asked to provide
information on their five main inputs and outputs, import intensity and export activities, as well as
information on firm characteristics, production, costs, taxes and constraints to growth.³

As illustrated in Table 1, the wood sector was the most highly represented sector in our
sample in Gabon (29.9% of the sample), while in Chad the food sector was heavily represented.
The textile sector was practically absent from the Gabon sample. When firms are classified in
terms of full time employment in 1996, we can see that small firms (5-29 employees) constitute
the largest category in both countries (47.1% in Gabon and 64% in Chad). Medium-sized firms
(30-99 employees) are more prevalent in Gabon (27.1% compared with 12.1% in Chad). Foreign
ownership was significant in the sample in Gabon.

3.2 Relative Price Shocks

Among the 85 firms surveyed in Gabon, only a subset of 44 firms were able to supply
complete and credible information on prices and quantities for their main inputs and outputs. In
Chad, 34 of the 57 firms surveyed presented complete price data. From this point on, it is this
sub-sample of firms that will be used in our analysis.

Using this sub-sample, we constructed unit prices for each product and input⁴. Firm-
specific Fischer indexes of the price of each firm’s output bundle were then constructed using
these product and input specific prices, PQ , and intermediate goods bundle, PI, Taking growth

³ Interviews in Gabon were carried in Libreville and its suburbs between May 19 and June 13 1997.
Interviews in Chad were carried out in N’djamena and Moundou between June 9 and 12. The teams of
interviewers included people from CETAI at HEC in Montreal and local consultants.

⁴ Firms had the choice of providing either their direct output price or the value of their various outputs and
the number of units produced In such a case, output price was constructed by dividing the value of
production by the number of units produced. For example, indexing products by j, we obtained
Pjt ⁼ Vjt / Qjt , j = 1, J. Intermediate input prices were imputed analogously.

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