Abstract
In Nigeria aquaculture has provided an avenue to bridge the ever-widening demand and supply gap in fish. Ituses land resources that would have otherwise been a waste. This paper examined whether Catfish is in the samemarket with Hake, Mackerel and Sadinnela. Unit root tests, Johansen`s bivariate and multivariate co integrationanalyses were carried out. The analyses show that there is co integration among the species.. The hypothesis ofno substitution between Catfish and the imported species was rejected All the species were classified as being inthe same market and are close substitutes. The results indicate that the price of catfish is not insulated from theprices of the imported species. The prices of the imported species are however insulated from the price of thelocal species. Fish production policies designed to alter fish prices without taking into account the foreign pricesare not likely to be effective in Nigeria.
Highlights
Aquaculture is still a subsistence activity in Africa
Nigeria is endowed with many large rivers, man-made lakes, creeks and about 200 nautical miles of marine water under the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)
According to Olomola (1991), Nigeria has a great potential to increase the availability of fish by supporting and expanding aquaculture and as noted by Idachaba (1991), the fishery sub-sector performed below expectation in large part due to the over-reliance on imported inputs
Summary
Aquaculture is still a subsistence activity in Africa. Some 30% of global fish supplies come from aquaculture but Africa produces less than 0.2% of the world’s total (Williams, 2004). An increase in production of the farmed specie is expected to have some negative externalities on the demand for the imported ones. This has implications for the management of fisheries as fish farms that are currently viable may become unviable if prices and revenue fall (Zabala, 1998). Nigeria is one of the largest importers of fish with official records indicating an average of 560,000 tonnes annually. This was estimated at N30 billion ($US400 million) in 2002 (Presidential Forum, 2005). The largest culture fish producer in Africa with production ranging from 17,700 to 25,000 metric tonnes. (Machena and Moehl, 2001; Ridler and Hishamunda 2001)
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