Eastmed Technical Documents 22
A Sub-Regional Analysis of the Socio-Economic Situation of the Eastern Mediterranean Fisheries
By
Dario Pinello and Mark Dimech
Rome, Italy - June 2016
Introduction
This report is the result of the Working Group on Fisheries Data Analysis that was conducted in Athens, Greece from the 2 to 6 November 2015, within the framework of the FAO EastMed project. The goal of the working group was to contribute to an understanding of the socio-economic situation of fishing fleets in the Eastern Mediterranean, with a view to support fisheries management advice in the region. In this respect, this report presents and compares selected fisheries socio-economic indicators estimated by the working group, including indicators of harvesting cost structure and profitability of the main fleet segments.
Data presented in this report were collected according to the requirements of the GFCM Task 1, following a similar stratified sample survey methodology. Data refers to the year 2012. The fishing fleets were classified according to GFCM Task 1 fleet segmentation. Although some segments of the various national fleets could not yet be covered, and data deficiencies exists, the working group has succeeded in bringing together data that has never been published before. Following that an analysis of the economic performance of the different fleet segments was carried out using the available knowledge and statistics.
The report is composed of seven chapters, organized by area, which cover all the participating members of the EastMed project including Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Palestine, and Turkey. All the chapters describing the economic activity of the fishing fleets have been drawn up in an identical manner. The sections on the individual fleet segments present a selection of 10 socio-economic indicators which are presented both in absolute terms and as average per vessel. When data was available the values of the average per vessel were compared to the ones of the previous year. For each fleet segment the chapter includes a general description of its most relevant characteristics, an analysis of its economic performance, cost structure and the share of that segment in the value of the total production of the fishing fleets.
When interpreting the economic indicators in this report one should take into consideration that the data is based on samples, surveys and estimations and the estimation of the indicators was done with the best available in formation. The authors would like to point out that further improvements should be made to the data collections systems and that in some areas the data which currently exists is not comprehensive. Furthermore the results are assessed from an economic and not from a fiscal point of view. This implies that the capital costs were imputed, which in some cases resulted in a lower apparent net profit (profit before taxes). In order to address this problem, the main main performance indicator used for the analysis was Gross Cash Flow (GCF) since it doesn’t take into consideration capital costs.
Another issue the authors considered was the labour cost, since the vast majority of the vessels are family run businesses with on average two crew members, including the skipper-owner. In this case there is a fine line between labour costs and economic indicators, making the analysis of the economic performance somehow problematic. Furthermore, the majority of the vessels of the region usually follow a share system in order to remunerate the fishers, which is related to the revenues and the running costs. In this respect the salaries themselves become economic performance indicators, and not mere costs. One should take this into account when comparing the salaries of the fisheries sector to the wages of the other sectors. It should also be noted that the analysis of wages does not account for other sources of income that may exist in the household.
Contents
1 - Introduction
2 - Coverage of the report and data collection schemes
3 - Methodology for the evaluation of economic performance
4 - Regional overview
• Macroeconomic context
• Characterization of the fishery sector and its contribution to the regional economy.
5 – Sub-Regional comparison
• Economic performance
• Fleet composition
• The cost structure
6 – Economic Analysis by Area Fleet segment
• Egypt
• Palestine
• Lebanon
• Turkey
• Greece
• Italy – Lonian Sea
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