Economic performance and capacity utilisation in vietnamese purse seine fishery

Abstract

This study identifies differences in vessel efficiency amongst purse seiners in Vietnamese fishery. Deterministic data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to assess relative capacity utilisation of each vessel, and double bootstrap DEA was adopted to overcome some of the drawbacks of nonparametric DEA. The study was based on a survey of costs and earnings from 52 purse seiners in 2016, revealing an average vessel profit margin of 11 %. By adopting double bootstrap DEA while assuming variable returns to scale, mean capacity utilisation was found to be 0.72 (with 95 % confidence interval from 0.67 to 0.79). This indicates that to sustain the current catch levels, expected inputs should be reduced by 21-33 %. The study shows that vessel size, fishing experience, and family size of skippers, all are factors affecting the capacity utilisation.