V. EMPLOYMENT IMPACT OF ALTERNATIVE FISH PROCESSING TECHNOLOGIES

Fish processing contributes in a significant manner to employment generation. For example, the processing of 1000 tonnes of fish will use approximately 50,000 man-days of semi-skilled and unskilled labour in the case of thermal processing (estimate based on thermal processing - Model 2). Thus, the fish processing sector of a country with a population of 5,000,000 and a per capital consumption of processed fish of 5 kg per year should provide permanent employment to 5000 workers. If one were to add backward linkages (e.g. fishing, production of various materials inputs (such as salt), and manufacturing of processing equipment) and forward linkages (e.g. transport and marketing of processed fish), the total number of permanent jobs would be much larger.

The output of processed fish per man-day is function of the adopted technology, the type of output produced, and the scale of production. The following table provides estimates of output per man-day for the various processes/products analysed in this chapter.

Table V.14
Output per man-day for various fish processing projects

The above table shows that output per man-day for thermal processing is lower than that for other processes such as salting/drying or smoking. This finding may seem surprising as thermal processing is much more capital-intensive than the other processing methods. It can, however, be explained by the fact that the technologies listed in Table V.14 do not yield similar products. Thus, the low output per man-day for thermal processing may be explained by the larger number of operations associated with the production of canned fish than with that of salted/dryed fish or smoked fish. In particular, the canning of fish requires much more initial processing (e.g. heading, gutting, scaling, filleting, weighing) than for other fish products. Furthermore, the packaging and labelling of smoked, dried or salted fish constitutes minor operations while they constitute major 1 ones (in terms of labour use) in the case of fish canning.¹

¹ These findings contradict those from another study which shows that smoking/drying is more labour-intensive than canning (see ILO, 1980). This may be explained by differences between the technologies described in this memorandum and those analysed in the above study.

From an employment point of view, the production of canned fish may be more attractive than that of other traditional fish products. However, employment in this case, should not be the only criterion for choosing among alternative fish processing technologies. It is also important to consider production costs per unit of output since low-income groups may not generally afford high priced fish products. Thus, if the satisfaction of the basic food requirements of low-income groups were to constitute a major socio-economic objective, the production of canned fish becomes less attractive than that of other cured fish products. For example, the unit production cost of salted/dried fish and that of smoked fish varies between $847/tonne to $1209/tonne (see Tables V.5 and V.9), while the unit production cost of canned fish varies between $2601/tonne to $2716/tonne (See Table V.13). Other factors may also favour the production of traditional fish products, including the relatively low foreign exchange input associated with fish drying/salting/smoking, and the possibility to locate small-scale fish processing units in rural areas. All the above factors should be taken into consideration when choosing among alternative fish processing techniques/products with a view to selecting those which contribute most to the adopted socio-economic objectives.