Technical Efficiency Analysis of Coastal Small-Scale Fisheries in Liberia

Abstract

The coastal fisheries in Liberia comprise small-scale Kru and Fanti low technology canoes and open boats, as well as industrial trawlers. At the end of the war in 2003, foreign industrial trawlers dominated the coastal fisheries in Liberia. After the war, the industrial fleet declined rapidly from 60 in 2004 to 15 in 2010. Over the same period the local Kru canoes grew from <400 to over 2400 and the motorized Fanti boats increased from <200 to about 800. Since 2010, when the government established a six nautical mile inshore exclusion zone, the industrial fleet has continued to decline, the Fantis have remained fairly constant, but the Kru fleet has continued to expand, reaching 3800 canoes by 2019. This paper analyzes the technical efficiency and productivity of the SSF fleets in Liberia. Data were collected from 46 randomly chosen Kru and 86 Fanti boats. There is a considerable difference between the Kru and the Fanti boats in terms of quantities of inputs used and output produced. Mean efficiency of the Kru canoes was 0.53, while for the Fanti boats it was 0.70, indicating considerable inefficiencies and scope for technical improvement. Vessel length and skipper’s age are the two main factors significantly influencing technical efficiency of the Kru and Fanti boats. The younger Kru operators (≤40 years) using newer and smaller dugout canoes (≤6.1 m) were more efficient than the older fishers in older and larger canoes, while the opposite was true for the Fantis. There were efficient boats and inefficient vessels among the Kru and Fanti but on average they were profitable. However, the design of these vessels offers limited scope to introduce improved fishing technology. To address the current technological regress and increase productivity in the fisheries, it is recommended that the Liberian government explore new harvesting technologies such as fiberglass reinforced plastic in the coastal fisheries.

Are Chilimira Fishers of Engraulicypris sardella (Günther, 1868) in Lake Malawi Productive? The Case of Nkhotakota District

“…The fisher allocation of fishing effort and harvesting strategy aims to improve fishing efficiency in achieving the highest yield or operating at maximum fishing capacity [18,19,21,25]. The measurement of the maximum capacity of fishing is dependent on performance benchmarks, where the current effort in fishing can be compared [15,18].…”

“…The measurement of the maximum capacity of fishing is dependent on performance benchmarks, where the current effort in fishing can be compared [15,18]. Production frontier estimates compare the relationship between maximum potential outputs from the effort exerted, where the difference is counted as the inefficiency level of the fishery [14][15][16][18][19][20]25,29]. The observed effort use (input) and output attained are used in estimating a fishery's productive efficiency [14][15][16][20][21][22]47,[49][50][51].…”

“…It measures how firms (Chilimira fishers) can successfully maximize output from the given set of inputs used in the fishery [53]. When a fishery best combines inputs to maximise outputs, it is said to be operating at the production frontier, and hence is technically efficient and sustainable in the long run [16,18,19,27]. In contrast, technically inefficient fisheries fails to operate at the frontier line by not realizing maximum output from the available input combination [16,18,19,23,26,27]; thus, it uses more or fewer inputs for the fishery.…”

“…When a fishery best combines inputs to maximise outputs, it is said to be operating at the production frontier, and hence is technically efficient and sustainable in the long run [16,18,19,27]. In contrast, technically inefficient fisheries fails to operate at the frontier line by not realizing maximum output from the available input combination [16,18,19,23,26,27]; thus, it uses more or fewer inputs for the fishery. The prod-uct of technical efficiency and allocative efficiency yields economic efficiency [18,23,54,55].…”

“…The technical efficiency analysis for the parametric econometric model uses an inputoutput model involving multiple inputs and single output only [15,16,19,22,24]. The multispecies nature of tropical fisheries and the higher diversity of Lake Malawi [9,59] meant that Chilimira net is prone to retaining catches of multi-species, despite the gear design and target being specified for E. sardella [3,32,43].…”