Fisheries Development and Management – some Reflections on Vietnam

• Main Author: Flaaten, Ola
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English; unknown
• Published: International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade
• Subjects: Fisheries > Economic aspects; Sustainable fisheries; Fisheries; Tromso; University of Tromso
• Online Access: https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/conference_proceedings_or_journals/7d278x872

IIFET 2008 Vietnam keynote presentation. Power Point presentation by Professor Ola Flaaten from The Norwegian College of Fishery Science, University of Tromso. With a coastline of 3300 km, and numerous rivers and bays, Vietnam is as if created for the production of food from the ocean, estuaries and rivers. The development of the fishing industry has been closely linked to the development of the general economy of this country. This is particularly so for the doi moi – economic reform – period from 1986, following a period of centralised command and control economy after the end of the war in the mid-1970s. Has the time now come for more emphasis on fisheries management than development? The number of fishing vessels has increased significantly over the last 25 years and engine power even more so, from 0.28 million HP in 1980 to 5.4 million HP in 2006. This corresponds to an annual increase of 23.4 per cent, whereas the average annual growth of the fish harvest in the same period was 6.1 and 3.9 per cent for volume and real value, respectively. Aquaculture, of mainly shrimp and fish, has grown even more than the traditional fisheries in the period 1991–2004, with an average of 10.4 and 23.8 per cent per year of production volume and export value (nominal USD), respectively. It is not just the fishing industry that has grown over the last couple of decades: the overall economic development, measured by annual growth rates of GDP and GDP per capita, was 7.0 per cent and 5.3 per cent, respectively. Fishing has been, and still is, mainly an open-access industry, regulated by some area and gear technological restrictions, and may now have reached its peak. Our costs and earnings surveys for 2004–5 in the Khanh Hoa province demonstrate that both offshore and some inshore fisheries were highly profitable, for both vessel owners and crew members. Some resource taxes have been collected by provincial and local authorities, but were abolished in 2006. This paper also discusses some policy issues and instruments for ...