The Fishery Value Chain Analysis in Taiwan

Abstract

Although the GDP of the fishery sector accounts for less than 0.3% of Taiwan’s GDP, there are many secondary and tertiary industries related to fisheries that add great value to the country’s economy. Therefore, when analyzing and calculating the output value and value added of the fishery sector, the relevance of these upstream and downstream industries should be considered jointly, and the value chain of the fishery industry should be studied and analyzed in order to truly present the value added created by fishery. This study aims to do this by first analyzing not only the primary fishery industry, but the value chain of the fishery industry at different stages such as fishery production, marine fishing, aquaculture, fishery processing, retail and services, and supportive systems. Then the value added of the whole fishery value chain to Taiwan’s GDP is estimated by using the Leontief input–output model, from the perspective of industry linkages and covering the period from 2011 to 2018. The empirical results suggest that the value added created by fishery and related industries accounted for 2.96% of the GDP in 2011, which rose to 3.11% in 2014, fell to 2.87% in 2015, rose to 2.93% in 2017, and fell to 2.84% in 2018. From 2011 to 2018, the amount of value added created by fisheries and related industries rose from NT$ 422.8 billion to NT$ 520.9 billion. The primary fishery sector has the largest contribution, followed by the fishery input sector, and transportation and sale service sector, and the fishery product processing sector has the lowest contribution rate. The empirical results provide important implications and references to the policy makers.