A comparative economic study of Saudi traditional fishery production efficiency at Red sea and Arabian Gulf

Agriculture Economic Dept., College of Agriculture, King Saud Univ., P.O. Box 2460, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia.Saudi agriculture policies aim to increase local production of main agriculture commodities such as red and white meats including fish. The gap between production and consumption of fish increased, so imported fish was 66000 tons in 1995. The traditional fishery sector considered as main source of fish, which yield 79% of total marine fishery yield on average period 1988- 1996. The limiting of traditional fishery resource availability, as number of fishing efforts and fishing days, at Red Sea and Arabian Gulf need to be studied for its efficient use and impacts on fishing yield. For the limited data available, the study methodology is based on derivation of stochastic production function frontier with number of fishing efforts and fishing days as the only inputs available in statistics available. Using that form of production function will separate the error term to show the technical inefficiency of production. The study estimated the aggregate and per-fishing effort stochastic production function frontier. Elasticity of production showed that the aggregate fishing yield would increase at Red Sea by 7.8% and at Arabian Gulf by 3.7%, when the number of fishing effort increased by 10%. While in case of the Arabian Gulf, the increase would reach 6.8% and 2% at Red Sea and Arabian Gulf respectively. Per-fishing effort yield would increase by 1.8% and 2.9% as number of fishing days increased by 10% for Red Sea and Arabian Gulf respectively