The purpose of this study is to identify problems and suggest improvements of estimating procedures and item of fisheries supply-demand statistics served as a basis for the fisheries supply-demand policies. Korea Rural Economic Institute(KREI) and Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries(MOF) respectively publish the fisheries supply-demand statistics. But the reliability of data is low as the statistics of these two organizations are limited and show discrepancy in the numbers. It is therefore difficult to use them as the basic data for policies. Also, an accurate data aggregation is difficult due to following problems in the items of statistics. 1) Problems in estimating route sales and non-route sales of production, 2) adequacy of fishery product yield rate compared to raw material in the fisheries import/export sector, 3) selection of target companies for understand stocks and survey scope of fish species, 4) applying‘0’to non-edible product demand etc.
In order to develop the fisheries industry as a future growth industry, it is necessary to establish the accurate fisheries supply-demand policy as the instability of fisheries supply and demand is increasing. To do this, statistical reliability has to be improved. The improvements proposed in this study should be implemented considering urgency. First of all, an exhaustive analysis of stock statistics and conversion rates of raw material yield in the fisheries import/export sector should be conducted. In the medium term and the long term, transferring production statistics to MOF and surveys on the use demand of non-food product and the level of reduced and discarded seafood products should be carried out in consecutive order.
The purpose of this study was to raise some questions about the supply and demand statistics of fisheries products and to find implications for food supply and demand. There are three problems in the statistics of fisheries supply and demand. First, it is a structural problem of supply and demand statistics. Supply and demand statistics are not accurate because the feed, the amount of loss, and the waste rate are not surveyed. Second, the amount of fish used as a moist pellet is missing. Third, although some of the seaweed and kelp production is used as abalone feed, it is not classified as feed. Taking these results into consideration, at least 300,000 tons should be classified as feed for fisheries supply and demand statistics. As mentioned above, the current statistics on the supply and demand of fisheries are incomplete and structural improvement is needed.