Bangladesh has made significant progress in social and economic development in recent years, but micronutrient deficiencies and poor dietary diversity remain a significant challenge. This paper developed five scenarios to explore futures of fish supply-demand in Bangladesh using the AsiaFish model, with special emphasis on the role of fish in macronutrient and micronutrient supply to address the nation's malnutrition and nutrition security challenges. A business-as-usual (BAU) scenario followed historical trends for exogenous variables used in the model. The four alternative scenarios explored: the implications of increase productivity of farmed tilapia, pangasius and rohu carp (AS1); improvements in the quality of feeds (AS2); disease outbreak in farmed shrimps and prawns (AS3); and climate change impacts (AS4). The BAU scenario indicates that aquaculture growth will be a prominent contribution to increasing total fish supply and demand and fish exports to 2040. Apart from the scenarios that are favourable to aquaculture sector development, other alternative scenarios highlighted the lower growth rate of capture fisheries and aquaculture compared to BAU, resulting in declining in per capita fish consumption, fish exports and nutrient supply from fish as a consequence. Increased availability of aquaculture fish can slightly compensate for the lower growth of capture fisheries in term of their nutrition quality and di-etary diversity, particularly for poor consumers. Policies towards sustaining fisheries and a nutrition-sensitive approach to aquaculture is recommended as both capture fisheries and aquaculture are essential for sustain-ing healthy and nutritious diets in Bangladesh.

In the beginning of 2019, the Singaporean government announced its desire to increase domestic food production and, in particular, aquaculture to reach 30% of self-sufficiency by 2030. Similar policies aiming at encouraging aquaculture growth abound in high-income countries in recent years, but have had limited success. Hence, this paper investigates the potential implications of such policies to foresee consequences beforehand and improve the policy's chances of success. Three scenarios of aquaculture development are built for Singapore until 2040, among which a business-as-usual scenario and two explorative scenarios aiming at increasing aquaculture production, the first emphasizing existing technologies and the second giving priority to novel and innovative ones, like recirculating aquaculture systems. These scenarios are assessed using an adapted version of the supply-demand partial equilibrium model Asiafish to challenge their viability in the socioeconomic context of Singapore. Only the two explorative scenarios are found to allow the Singaporean government to reach its goal in terms of seafood self-sufficiency by 2030, one of which appears to have strong advantages. In this scenario, imports decrease by 28% by 2040, seafood self-sufficiency reaches 69% and 90% of all aquaculture originates from innovative technologies, which would make Singapore an aquaculture tech-hub. It also has higher benefits within Singapore environmental, social and economic constraints such as land and aquafeed scarcity.

This paper explores future scenarios for the production, consumption, international trade and prices in fish of the Philippines through the year 2035. Future paths for output were obtained through expert consultations while those for consumption and international trade were generated by feeding the output projections into a multi-market model known as AsiaFish. The baseline scenario depicts a setting where total fish production in 2035 is about 5.5 million tons or about two times its levels in 2012. As a result, per capita consumption of fish will be about 37 kg/person in 2035 or about 20% higher than in 2012. Fish exports and imports in 2035 are also expected to be more than two times as much as in 2012. Alternative scenarios depict both optimistic and pessimistic outcomes for the fish sector of the country. These scenarios were assumed to be influenced by perceptions on the impacts of climate change, adaptation to climate change, equity in the use of resources, and government policy.

This paper explores the seafood sector in Indonesia, using fish supply-demand modeling, with special focus on the growing role of aquaculture in the country's food portfolio. The paper describes six scenarios for future fish supply–demand dynamics and examines the role of aquaculture growth in fish supply in Indonesia. A business as usual scenario (BAU) assumed exogenous variables of our supply-demand model following historical trends. Five alternative scenarios explored the implications of stagnant capture fisheries; export-oriented growth of aquaculture; domestic-oriented aquaculture growth; slow growth of aquaculture sector; and disease outbreaks to key aquaculture species. The BAU scenario projected that fish supply and demand in Indonesia continues to increase over time and strong aquaculture growth is critical to meet increasing demand for fish. Stagnant capture fisheries resulted in increasing fish prices and decreasing fish consumption. Export-oriented aquaculture growth benefitted fish supply and exports, but also helped lower domestic prices and thus increase consumption. An emphasis on domestic aquaculture commodities increased fish supply, providing best domestic consumption outcomes and lower consumer prices. Slow aquaculture growth reduced fish supply and led to undesirable increases in domestic prices and decreasing domestic consumption as a consequence. Disease outbreaks in shrimp and carp aquaculture resulted in a short-term reduction in aquaculture output and increasing fish prices, lowering fish consumption.

Neighborhood and spillover effects on technical efficiency were investigated among 270 randomly drawn farming households from 18 irrigated villages in Guimba, Nueva Ecija, Philippines, using a two-step procedure. In the first stage, stochastic frontier production function was used to estimate farmer's technical efficiency; in the second stage, appropriate spatial econometric models of technical efficiency were estimated. Spatial econometric models adopted in this study detected spatial dependency on technical efficiency in the error term of the spatial model across seasons and locations, which can be associated with unobserved factors that similarly influence farmers' technical efficiencies at the same time. Farm size, income, and regular contact and consultation with agricultural technicians were found to significantly affect technical efficiency. Results of the spatial regression show that owner-cultivator status and loamy soil are associated with increased technical efficiency. The local government of Guimba can use findings of this study in formulating agricultural policies and implementing essential interventions to improve the technical efficiency of rice farmers.

Indonesia is the world's second largest seafood producer, but capture fisheries landings have stagnated over the last decade. In response, the Indonesian government has set ambitious targets for expanding the aquaculture sector up to 2030. The present research therefore quantifies environmental impacts using life cycle assessments (LCAs), and some socioeconomic indicators, for six alternative scenarios projecting the growth of Indonesia's aquaculture up to 2030 by Tran et al. (2017). From these results, policy implications are drawn and suggestions for improvements made for gearing the Indonesian government and seafood industry towards blue growth.Ten dominant aquaculture farming systems were characterized and benchmarked using LCA, building upon data collected on Sumatra, Java, Lombok, and Sulawesi between 2014 and 2015. Assuming business as usual up to 2030, the impacts/indicators global warming (3.3-fold increase), acidification (33-fold increase), eutrophication (3.5-fold increase), land-use (3.6-fold increase), freshwater consumption (4-fold increase), energy use (3.4-fold increase), reliance on wild fish (3.4-fold increase), total fish output (3.3-fold increase), and full-time employments (33-fold increase) would increase by three to four-fold, while monetary value would increase almost six-fold. Business as usual alongside several other future scenarios would consequently require more wild fish and land than is physically manageable using current production practices, while still not satisfying the growth targets set by the Indonesian government. A major transformation of the aquaculture industry supported by public policies is therefore needed to avoid extensive environmental damage. Similar studies on future food growth projections are encouraged in order to give more realistic recommendations to policy makers. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Aquaculture is the fastest-growing food production sector globally, with production projected to double within the next 15–20 years. Future growth of aquaculture is essential to providing sustainable supplies of fish in national, regional and global fish food systems; creating jobs; and maintaining fish at affordable levels for resource-poor consumers. To ensure that the anticipated growth of aquaculture remains both economically and ecologically sustainable, we need to better understand the likely patterns of growth, as well as the opportunities and challenges, that these trends present. This knowledge will enable us to better prioritize investments that will help ensure the sustainable development of the sector. In Indonesia, WorldFish and partners have applied a unique methodology to evaluate growth trajectories for aquaculture under various scenarios, as well as the opportunities and challenges these represent. Indonesia is currently the fourth largest aquaculture producer globally, and the sector needs to grow to meet future fish demand. The study overlapped economic and environmental models with quantitative and participatory approaches to understand the future of aquaculture in Indonesia. Such analyses, while not definitive, have provided new understanding of the future supply and demand for seafood in Indonesia stretching to 2030. The learning from this research provides a foundation for future interventions in Indonesian fish food systems, as well as a suite of methodologies that can be applied more widely for insightful analyses of aquaculture growth trajectories in other countries or regions.

As part of its global obligations to responding to climate change, the Philippines is committed to limiting future emissions growth through policy interventions such as funding research on mitigation and direct regulation of energy efficiency requirements. The Philippines is also interested in extensions of such policies, including the use of carbon taxes, measures to enhance energy efficiency, and changes to the country's electricity generation mix.This paper develops a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Philippine economy to analyse the effects of such climate change policy options in the period to 2020. The modelling results indicate that given the current level of development in the Philippine electricity generation and transport sectors, even relatively modest measures have marked impacts on emissions with marginal economic impacts. A carbon tax of $US5 per a tonne, results in a 9.8% reduction in emissions and a 0.5% reduction in GDP from baseline levels to 2020. Similarly, a 2% increase in energy efficiency throughout the Philippine economy results in an 8.5% reduction in emissions and 0.6% reduction in GDP compared to the underlying baseline of no policy response. Finally, a 10% shift in the coal-fired generation capacity results in an 11.0% reduction in emissions with GDP in fact increasing by 1.9% over baseline levels. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Economic Society of Australia, Queensland. All rights reserved.

The Lao economy is projected to grow at 8 percent in 2013. The hydropower sector (both completed projects in operation and projects in the construction or development phase), construction, food processing, and services sectors remain the major contributors to this growth. Overall inflation has risen considerably since the end of 2012, due to a notable increase in non-rice food prices. The fiscal deficit as a ratio to gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to widen in FY2012-2013. Therefore, containing aggregate demand through fiscal and credit growth management is essential to maintain macroeconomic balances while exchange rate management needs to be measured given the pressures on reserves and competitiveness. As the banking sector continues to expand and credit growth remains relatively high, bank supervision capacity needs to be strengthened. Lao People's Democratic Republic's (PDR's) robust economic performance and expansionary fiscal policy calls for a bolder investment in social sector spending. This paper is divided into following two parts: part one gives recent economic developments; and part two presents sector focus.

Economic evidence on sanitation supports decisions on resource allocation and selection of efficient and affordable sanitation interventions. This study presents the economic efficiency (costs versus benefits) of sanitation interventions to better manage human excreta, from 47 field sites, covering six countries of Southeast Asia (Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Lao PDR, the Philippines and Vietnam). Costs were estimated in each location, while benefits (improved health, avoided water pollution, reduced sanitation access time, resource recovery) were estimated using evidence from published studies and field sites. The economic return per currency unit invested, known as the benefit-cost ratio (BCR), and the cost per disability-adjusted life-year (DALY) averted were estimated. Across 25 rural field sites, pit latrines had a BCR of at least 5 in all countries, except Cambodia where the BCR was 2. In 22 urban field sites, septic tanks with wastewater management had a BCR of at least 2. Costs per DALY averted were found to be ‘cost-effective’ for most sanitation interventions in all countries. Economic performance declined significantly when considering non-use of facilities by households or unused infrastructural capacity. However, the economic net returns were positive under all pessimistic scenarios examined in one-way sensitivity analysis. This study demonstrates that sanitation is a highly profitable social and economic investment in six Asian countries.

The hog and poultry industries are important growth points in Philippine agriculture, posting positive growth rates even while the other sectors are contracting. Prospects for continued growth, however, are less bright in the advent of increasing competitive forces brought about by pressures of globalization. This study provided an analysis of the growth in total factor productivity (TFP) for the poultry and hog industries. For poultry, the TA¶rnqvist Index approach based on input-output data was used to estimate TFP growth between 1994 and 2000. For hogs, the stochastic frontier approach was implemented using farm survey data from the provinces of Batangas and Laguna which were gathered in 2003 and 2008. The results indicated a 15 percent growth in TFP in poultry, attributed primarily to the increasing commercialization of the industry. In hogs, TFP growth was 3.5 percent largely due to the firms' adjustment toward their optimal scale of operation.

The overall objective of the paper is to demonstrate how the input-output table can be used to calculate total factor productivity growth for a particular sector or commodity. In particular, it describes the adjustments and additional data that are needed in the estimation process. Using the Tornqvist index, the paper illustrates the technique in the poultry sector of the Philippines. It finds that total factor productivity growth had a significant impact in explaining the increase in revenues and reduction in production costs for the sector.

The recent proliferation of state and local universities and colleges compounded with the high unemployment rate among graduates of fields related to agriculture, fisheries, and natural resources (AFNR) questions the validity of government making it a standing policy to make AFNR tertiary education more attractive.This paper attempts to address this issue by way of a supply-and-demand model of AFNR services. Results of the simulations indicate that there are bleak prospects for AFNR graduates in paid employment.The source of the problem appears to be weak demand such that further expansion in AFNR programs and enrolment as well as proposals to further subsidize these programs should be reconsidered. Classification-JEL: C69, J21, J64

This paper examines the economic impacts of using sugar as feedstock for biofuels on agriculture and food security in the Philippines. In particular, it focuses on the impacts on prices, outputs, consumption and trade of industries in the agricultural and food processing sectors. The tool used in the study is computable general equilibrium model of the Philippines. The analysis was implemented by replacing inputs with crude petroleum with bioethanol, which is sourced from the sugar industry, in the petroleum refining industry.The study found that the initiative raises the output of the 'Agriculture, Fishery and Forestry sector'. However, this is driven mostly by the expansion of the output of the sugar industry, with a large proportion of the industries in the sector experiencing a contraction in output. The analysis also shows that promoting sugar as a biofuel feedstock can have adverse effects on food security. This conclusion is drawn mainly from the projected decline in the consumption of products from the agricultural and food processing sectors.

The last three decades have witnessed dramatic changes in the structure of supply and demand for fish, especially in Asia. This WorldFish research study sponsored by the Asian Development Bank focussed on nine developing countries – Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam, all active players in the transformation of global fish supply and demand. The study, broken into five components and reported here, considered: 1) the profile of key aquaculture technologies and fishing practices; 2) analysis of policies, institutions and support services; 3) socioeconomic profile of major stakeholders in the fisheries sector; 4) projections of fish demand and supply in the nine Asian countries; and 5) formulation of national action plans based on the findings and recommendations of the study.

This paper examines the economy-wide impacts of a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) on the Philippine economy. In particular, it uses an applied general equilibrium model to determine the effects of alternative scenarios on aggregate and sectoral outputs, consumption, and international trade. The paper also compares the FTAAP to reforms which are confined to the ASEAN plus 3 and to a broader set of tariff changes that covers all the trading partners of the Philippines. The findings of the paper are as follows. First, the FTAAP is likely to benefit the Philippines in the form of higher aggregate output and employment. However, such gains are not projected for all industries as the simulation results indicate declines in the outputs of activities related to rice and corn. Second, the benefits from the FTAAP are likely to come more from the removal of tariffs on nonagriculture products. Finally, the aggregate gains from the FTAAP are larger than an arrangement which is limited to ASEAN plus 3 countries. However, the differences in the impacts do not appear to be very large.

This paper analyzes the effects of various trade policies that artificially create either an economic protection or penalty to the Fisheries sector. It conducts a quantitative analysis of trade regulations using the AsiaFish model, a partial equilibrium model that relates production, consumption, and trade of various fish commodities that are disaggregated by type or species group. The model estimates the magnitude and direction of the effects of current changes in trade policies on the Philippine fish markets, specifically on domestic demand and supply of Fish and on importation and exportation of the country's fishery products. The disaggregated treatment of the fisheries sector in the model allows the evaluation of the distribution of benefits/costs of the trade policies on the different stakeholders in fisheries (i.e., producers, consumers, and traders).

The paper examines the possibilities of using trade policy to address the adverse economic effects of an avian influenza outbreak in the Philippines. In particular, it employs a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model for analyzing the likely effects of two options; namely, a) a ban on imported poultry, and b) the removal of tariffs on non-poultry meat products. Using six model scenarios (i.e., production shocks, consumption shocks, ban on poultry imports, removal of tariff on non-poultry imports, and selected combinations of these shocks), the simulation results reveal that (a) the consumption and production shocks are expected to have a contractionary effect on real GDP; (b) the expected fall in the output of poultry products explains most of the decline in real GDP; (c) the production shock appears to have a larger impact since this explains most of the decline in real GDP as well as the increase in the general price level; (d) while the consumption shock tends to have a larger impact on the poultry products, the production shock dominates the aggregate responses because of its effects on other industries, and (e) avian influenza is likely to have far-reaching effects on the economy, way beyond the poultry sector. Based on these results, this paper supports the use of an import ban as a preventive measure against the occurrence of an avian influenza attack. This is based on the finding that the economic costs from such a measure appear to be lower than the costs associated with the disease. In contrast, the study finds that there is a weak case for removing tariffs on non-poultry meat products as a means to soften the harmful impacts of an avian influenza outbreak.

The developments in regional Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models have been reviewed with a view to identify future directions for modelling in the Philippines. It is observed that regional CGE models have been used extensively in the analysis of national and regional issues. These models can be divided into three classes: region-specific, bottomup and “partial” models. This paper asserts that existing models of the Philippines generally belong to the third class. This implies that there is very little scope for evaluating region-specific issues in the Philippines.