Fisheries management privatisation: a case study of Sierra Leone
Before 1991, the Department of Fisheries was the sole formal fisheries management authority in Sierra Leone. This authority's management of the fisheries resulted, however, in less than 10% of the estimated annual resource rent accruing to government and in increasing the importance of resource over-exploitation. To improve stock conservation and rent collection the fisheries management functions of the marketing of industrial fishing licences, monitoring, control and surveillance were privatised in 1991 to a Joint Venture Company, owned by the Government (51%) and private investors (49%). This management experiment, however, collapsed in 1993, and political interference has often been cited as a major contributing factor. This paper is part of an on-going assessment of the economic efficiency of the fisheries management contract of the Joint Venture Company in order to bring out the importance of this determinant in the demise of the Company and lessons for improving management. Conditions under which efficiency might be improved are also discussed. It mainly relies on the use of estimated indices as proxy for the financial viability of the management contract. Preliminary analysis is indicative of the inefficiency of the contract and enforcement system, despite the improvement in entry control and upward trend in the total nominal value of the collected annual access fees. The consequent attempt to adjust the management contract in order to improve its net returns failed, leading to its eventual collapse. The dependence of the fisheries management revenue on multi-factors such as the demand for fishing licences and resource supply suggests the need for the contract to be flexible and profitable.