Joint Market Monitoring: Situation in Critical Markets along the Line of Contact in Northern Donetsk and Luhansk GCA Round III February 2018

This report, drafted by ACTED, represents the findings of the third round of joint market monitoring (MM) undertaken collaboratively by ACCESS partners, Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and Save the Children International (SCI). The study aimed at exploring critical market networks which cover both essential goods that are necessary to ensure survival (such as food items, medicines or hygiene items) and non-essential goods that support the livelihoods of the conflict affected population (such as construction materials and agricultural inputs). This MM started in August 2017 and was intended as an iterative quarterly exercise, aimed not only at providing a snapshot of the situation at the moment of data collection, but also at measuring trends over time, in terms of access and affordability of goods on the markets as well as markets and supply chains capacities.

The report presents and analyzes the data obtained in the winter round of the study (February 2018), following mostly the same methodology as in Rounds I and II. It also looks at changes and trends affecting markets in all rounds, be they seasonal or of any other nature. The survey provides a comprehensive picture of the markets in the target area, covering 39 localities along the contact line in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts in GCA. In contrast to the first and second round, the round 3 report also includes a snapshot picture of market centers in NGCA (Donetsk and Luhansk cities) and a comparative analysis of availability and prices of essential food and hygiene items between market sub-centers in GCA, two market centers in NGCA and Kiev.