Results of the Survey for the status of Aquaculture in APEC Economies

Aquaculture in APEC members has brought a series of benefits as the economies work together to improve knowledge, infrastructure, investments, science, and business among other gains. The network component has been a relevant factor for improvements in Asian-Pacific regions, although challenges remain. From the top ten aquaculture producer economies, six out of twenty-one APEC member economies are recognized as the top ten aquaculture producers: People’s Republic of China (1), Indonesia (2), Viet Nam (4), Republic of Korea (4), The Philippines (5), and Chile (9). P.R. China has been for years the primary producer with 35% of the total aquaculture production worldwide and 37% of aquatic animal production in 2020. The contribution of the Asia region is 90% of the total worldwide production.

For this report, we selected aquaculture species that are the most important aquatic-farmed species in terms of production, and value, contribute with rural livelihoods, world trade, and are relevant to APEC economies. The selected species Carps, Catfish, Salmon , Shrimp-Prawns, and Tilapia (Table 1) are the most valuable aquaculture species that significantly contribute with a protein source to the human population. Based on the information available on the FAO (FAO, 2022c), the last eight years (2012 to 2020) of aquaculture production for the species detailed before were selected. By using the criteria “name of each economy”, “Detailed production source”, and “Aquaculture production”, the data was cleaned by the APEC economies and the species of interest. Consequently, the statistics presented by the economy represented the aquaculture production of the relevant species listed earlier organized by region North-Central America, South America, South-East Asia, East-Asia, Eastern Europe, and Oceania.