Fisheries
Why So Many Local Fishing Ventures Flop
FFA report outlines reasons
Why do so many of the Pacific's local tuna fishing ventures flop?
One reason is that the people running them may be fishermen, but not businessmen, as well. Even worse, the managers may be the government. Tuna ventures run by experienced businessmen who don't necessarily have a fishing background are most likely to succeed.
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These are some of the conclusions published in a report for the Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) by Robert Gillett, whose Preston and Associates, a firm run by consultants, has decades of Pacific fisheries know-how. The FFA wanted an update on what stage tuna fishing has reached in its member countries and on what obstacles to success need to be jumped or looked at more closely.
By the end of 2002, 14 pole-and-line, 40 purse seiners and 495 longline fishing boats were based in the Pacific Islands as distinct from vessels operating from Asia. Some were wholly or partly local-owned. According to the report, 2959 Pacific Islands citizens were working on locally based fleets; another 5555 people worked ashore in fish processing and related businesses.
Locally-based offshore vessels were worth about US$79.3 million to the GDP of 14 islands countries in 1999. One hurdle for the industry, the report says, is the great differences of opinion between government fisheries agencies and commercial fishermen about fishing needs. The differences are worst when the two sides don't talk to each other much.
A positive trend is that there is a "growing and healthy" interest in whether planned tuna fishing ventures can be assured of profitability. The region has a history of government-inspired fishing flops that lost millions of dollars.
Very few small-scale local commercial fishermen had grown to become medium-scale ones, the report says. Almost all successful locally based fishing businesses are run by:
"There is much interest in the region in attracting foreign investment to the tuna industry," the report says. "Attention should be focused on improving these efforts.
"Government officials tend to focus on constraints associated with attracting and approving investments, whereas the private fisheries firms seem to emphasise such problems as security of the investment and stability of government policies in the fisheries sector."
The report adds that "most of the fisheries officers encountered expressed the sentiment that the government should refrain from commercial involvement and focus on policy environment." >It is surprising, the report says, that so few countries make good use of FADS (fish aggregation devices-moored rafts and other artificial float structures to which fish are greatly attracted).
For small-scale tuna fishing, "one of the few initiatives that has been successful and continues to thrive is the FAD. Noting the relative success of FAD, it is ironic that very few countries have effective on-going FAD programmes."
If private business is to be the engine for a growing tuna industry, then getting appropriate FFA report and other relevant information to businessmen is "crucially important," the report says. It describes " a surprising amount of interest in fisheries taxation."
"On the government side, there seemed to be the perception in some countries of an opportunity to tax a newly profitable industry. In other countries, fisheries officers view the possibility of a change in tax regimes as a threat to recent progress in fisheries industry development."
Many businessmen felt fishing suffered from unfair taxation. "Fuel costs are critically important to tuna fishing operations. In all the countries of the region where there is a thriving locally-owned tuna industry, there are major fuel duty/tax concessions." Where fuel prices are highest, "there is little tuna industry development."
