Analysis of Impact of Government Support to Fishermen for Mechanization of boats : Application of Total Factor Productivity Approach and Decomposition Analysis

摘要

The impact of various schemes like providing geographical positioning system, subsidies and other concessions extended by state and central government for coastal Karnataka fisher folk has been analyzed using the concept of total factor productivity.The frontier production function (Cobb-Douglas) revealed that among the four variables considered for the study, the labour had negative impact on fish catch per boat that one per cent increase in labour days would lead to decline in fish catch by 0.45 per cent. This implies that fishermen had employed more labour than required. The boat equipped with new technology had positive impact, as regression coefficient of dummy variable was positive. The total factor (TFP) revealed that there was positive contribution due to new technology, but fishermen were not efficient in their fishing effort. Thus, there is great scope for increasing fish output if fishermen operate efficiently. Further, the aggregate growth in the fish production in Karnataka was declining over the years, which could largely be attributed to falling productivity of fishery boats.