Comparing government regulated and unregulated inland water fisheries of Plateau State, Nigeria: an economic productivity analysis

Abstract

The objectives of the research was to compares the economics of regulated and unregulated fisheries through the estimates of technical, allocative and economic efficiency of micro entrepreneur or artisanal fishers in  the central Nigerian state of Plateau, with a view to examine the economic benefits and sustainability on inland water fisheries as renewable resource in developing economics. Stochastic frontier production and cost functions using the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) technique was used to analysed data collected from, daily fishing observations made for 4 weeks, and through questionnaire from 20 micro entrepreneurs from unregulated lakes of Polmakat, Shimankar, Deben, Janta and 30 micro entrepreneurs from the only regulated Pandam Lake to give a sample size of 110 respondents selected in a multi-stage sampling technique. The mean technical, allocative and economic efficiency of unregulated fishers were 0.83, 0.56 and 0.68 respectively, while, the mean technical, allocative and economic efficiencies of the regulated fishers were 0.91, 0.68 and 0.72 respectively. This study shows higher potential for increase in fishing output at unregulated fisheries through better use of available resources, given the current state of technology. The MLE result suggested that extension contact, age and educational status were major determinants of efficiency in unregulated fishing, meaning that the transformation for effective and sustainable fisheries exploitation requires the involvement of educated fishers, extension education, and redefinition of property rights of unregulated fishery and constraining of inputs at regulated fishery.

Keywords: micro entrepreneurs, economic, efficiency, comparative, stochastic, renewable resource