OECD Review of Fisheries: Policies and Summary Statistics 2017
The OECD Review of Fisheries provides information on developments in policies and activities in the fishing and aquaculture sectors of OECD countries and participating economies, mainly for the period 2015-16. This year’s edition includes 35 countries and economies, comprising 28 OECD countries as well as a regional chapter covering developments in the European Union. Also participating in this edition are Argentina, the People’s Republic of China, Colombia, Indonesia, Lithuania, Chinese Taipei, and Thailand. Together, the participants in this Review represent nearly half of global fisheries production, and the majority of aquaculture production.
Chapters 1, 2 and 3, known as the “General Survey”, provide an overview of the activities in the sector and outline country summary statistics and key developments in the fisheries and aquaculture sectors. The Country Snapshots in Chapter 4 provide additional country level data and details on institutions and policies based on contributions by participating countries and economies.
The FSE database and indicators of policy support to fisheries
This chapter provides the latest available data on support to capture fisheries. The Fisheries Support Estimate (FSE) database now inventories budgetary support to fisheries that totals USD 13 billion (EUR 11.7 billion) in 33 countries and economies in 2015. For the first time, data for the People’s Republic of China (hereafter “China”) is included in the database, revealing the scale of policies in this important fishing nation. Nearly 88% of all support transferred to individual fishers recorded in the database originates in China, and the majority of this is a fuel subsidy programme for fishing vessels. In a positive development, China has announced plans to progressively reduce this subsidy. For most other countries and economies in the database, support to general services to the sector, rather than transfers to individual fishers, dominate. Governments invest a significant amount of resources to this kind of support, which includes management, enforcement, research, infrastructure and marketing. On average, these expenditures by governments equal 16% of the value of landings; that is, USD 1 in every 6 earned by the sector. While some governments recoup these costs from fishers, this approach is not commonly applied and accounts for only a small percentage of the total outlay on general services to the sector.