Financing Resources for Fishery Development

Abstract

The provision of finance for fishery development is often one of the most difficult problems for the developing countries to solve for a variety of reasons, such as lack or insufficiency of data about the resource concerned, inadequacy of the infrastructure and other supporting services, low level of technical management and skills, lack of marketing and distribution, and so on. Yet there are many sources for investment funds and, indeed, an increasing availability of such funds from the national public and private sectors, and from international sources. These include governmental and private sources and cover a number of investment arrangements from direct cash participation to credit systems and joint ventures. Also included are the international finance agencies, such as the World Bank Group and the complementary regional banks. These are playing a bigger role now than ever before in fishery development. The general criteria for an investment in fisheries, steps that have to be taken before a decision can be reached to undertake an investment, financial sources and arrangements available to the developing countries, and how they can best go about obtaining the required investment funds, are reviewed.