Thursday, May 9, 2013

Here's that report

The Economic Importance of the Bristol Bay Salmon Industry

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's one long and somewhat repetitive report.

Finally - the Bay is recognized as being worth more than $200-300m. Still, $1.5b is only the DOMESTIC value. The exported values are greatly under reported, and actually missing.

The annual street value has to be closer to $5 billion. Hiding this fact is hurting the fight against Pebble.

STaufen said...

This is a noble effort. Such a lengthy report - attempting to brightly illuminate the fishery value - could have benefitted with some per pound equivalents. The 'purchasing' (inputs) relationship of 42.3% to ex-vessel dollars, and $57.7% paid to others offers a valuable clue to missing global dollars.

It is common that the 'supplier' (fishermen as sellers) component now receives an estimated average of 20% of the global pie. This may mean we're about $435 million short of dollars on the First Wholesale Level. Given the nature of salmon, and how vastly greater sales values are in markets like Japan (justifying by themselves a much higher BBay ex-vessel price), we're shorted even more by foreign-owned corporations and their global strategies.

Remember, the secondary processing for much frozen salmon takes place in foreign nations -- whereas the USA would do well to capture much of those Value Added earnings here.

In any case, the authors rightfully struggle with and do a good job at parsing out or teasing out a lot of assumed information. It would be interesting to know more about any modifications to the IMPLAN modeling for Local Purchasing Coefficients. Input-Output studies are based on regional definition, problem definition, and other assumptions.

Likewise, a first glance of the Induced jobs and values indicates (especially for job creation) obviously high presumed job creation by downstream household spending etc. However, this modeling attempts a far greater integrity than we've seen to date.

Bottom line for Groundswell is the desire to know what happens in Japan, China, Korea and other places of secondary processing - and the opportunities lost to 'America'. One must remember that pre-season sales agreements or parent-subsidiary supply commitments are important to illuminate, as well.

IMPLAN software can also spit out Tax tables and many other useful tables. Guide us to a website where some of those details might be reviewed as well, please.

Note: seafood processing labor is 8.7% of the first wholesale value, and with an overall approx. product recovery (not incl. roe) clocks in at about 64% = 18.76 cents per round catch pound landed, or roughly 29.3 cents per first wholesale pound (if we read the table values correctly - without roe). Note how tendering and maintenance each weigh in within the $30 mln. zone, as well. And remember some tenders are company-affiliated/-financed.

Lots to look at therein... but good job for the effort made (a team does a better job, eh!).
Now, before we get GOA Groundfish Catch Shares, can the State get some transparency and gather some numbers for that fishery? Especially processing workers and crew payments (and the decline of latter in preparation for IFQs)?!?

Groundswell