AN ECONOMIC STUDY OF THE GAP OF FOOD FISH AND THE ROLE OF AQUACULTURE IN THE LIMIT OF IT

Abstract

Despite that Egypt has an area of 13.9 million feddan of capture fisheries, but those fisheries have low capacities for regeneration and sustainability in addition that lakes are almost drying up. These difficulties led to a decline of the producing fisheries whish made it difficult to meet consumer consumption of fish. In order to fill this gap in demand, fish import has increased whish is an added burden on the Egyptian agricultural trade balance. The increase in imports jumped from 88 thousand tones with an estimated value LE 118 millions in the year 1990 to 259 thousand tones with an estimated value of LE 1.2 billions in 2007, and declined in the year 2009 to 135500 tones with an estimated value of LE 2.0 billions. This study is to evaluate the relative importance of sources of fish production and its role in covering domestic consumption during the period (1990-2009), the contribution of the method of Egyptian aquaculture in fish production, and the importance of economic variables affecting the size of the consumption gap. thousand The production of farm truck has increased sizably from tones in 1990 representing only 62.8% of total aquaculture production (٦٧.2 thousand tones) to 693 thousand tones in 2009 representing 97.4% of the total aquaculture (711.8 thousand tones). this is an indication that farm truck production is the main source of aquaculture fish production. A great attention then should be given to the method of fish farming if we want to close the gap The agricultural policy has to be modified to lend technical assistance and provide training and guidance. It is expected that consumption of fish would increase to 1686.5 thousand tones in 2015 and 1929 thousand tones in the year 2020 The factors affecting consumption of fish are considered to include retail price of poultry, fish, and population. The factors used in this study to estimate fish gap are: the gap as dependant variable and domestic production of fish, national consumption of fish, personal real income, number of population, and the average per capita of fish. It appears that domestic production of fish and consumption are the main factors determining the fish gap.