Tilapia Market Competitiveness And Improvements In Guangdong Province

Tilapia is one of the world’s major freshwater fish. Tilapia aquaculture sector industry is focused on cultivating object now. China is a big country for tilapia farming. Its production and exports are among the leading level in the world. Guangdong’s climate and water conditions provide a good foundation for the development of tilapia industry and make it being the largest tilapia production and export in China. In recent years, with the change in the external environment, Guangdong tilapia market competitiveness also changed a lot. On the one hand, more countries and regions begin to develop tilapia industry and make the market competition increasingly fierce. On the other hand, with the development of economic globalization and the expansion of tilapia export trade, Tilapia exports and export prices in the international market are also affected by the international market competition. So, how to deal with the evolving market environment and improve tilapia competitiveness in Guangdong catch our attention.From the present production situation, tilapia’s production is high and in the top of the country, but the growth rate slowed in recent years and the proportion is shrinking. From the processing status quo, the mostly tilapia processed is primary products in China. The main products for export are frozen tilapia, frozen tilapia fillets and prepared or preserved tilapia, the first two have a substitution effect between the latter one. Tilapia’ acquisition as lpounds for the bound and have a difference of about one million for a pound. The overall purchase price has a larger change over time. In quality and safety, the quality and testing standards are not synchronized with the exporting country and not fully perform security management practices. These have seriously affected the tilapia’s export situation. Look from the sale status quo, most of Guangdong tilapia sale in the domestic market but compete seriously in these yeas. The export volume is rising, but the rate of increase is lower than other provinces. The export price is fluctuations and the price has a large difference between different products. Trade stability is weak.On the competitive performance, Market net profit margin, market contribution rate, the international market share is high, but declining in recent years, profits reducing faster, exports have the trend of been beyond. On competitiveness, production costs and domestic prices do not have value advantage, but with a price-competitive in the international market. Revealed comparative advantage index has been declining and download fast and provides less security and quality. On the competitive potential, freshwater areas and technology do not have the advantages of natural resources. Upstream industry’s support is not enough and the degree of cooperation with the downstream organization does not close. Government subsidies and agriculture loans are not enough. Overall, tilapia’s competitive competitiveness is high but experiences a down trend. The sustainable development ability is not strong.In this paper, we look from farmers’ perspective and though Structural-equation-model to investigate the improving ways of market competitiveness. Ranking the factors which will improve the market competitiveness namely value capture capabilities, industrial and organizational support, technology acquisition, ability to obtain information and resource endowments. They also have total degeneration among the five variables. Among them industrial and organizational support, ability to obtain information and value capture capabilities have the least significant to total. Dimensions for each measurement, climate has the least impact on the resources. The demand has the least significant respond on the changing of value ability. The least reaction to the industry support level is the industry processing. The ability of get fry information has the minimum performance on obtain information. Technical frequency has the minimum response to technology diffusion capacity. The ability of sale has the weakness reflect to competitiveness. These are the most important points to the improvement of market competitiveness.For the empirical results, we propose policy recommendations respectively from resource endowments, the ability to obtain value, industrial and organizational support, technology acquisition and the ability to obtain information. Proposed to play full local strengths and improve resource utilization, improve the quality and value of tilapia and facilitate transactions stability, improve upstream and downstream industries and increase the organization and government support, increase technical method and improve the R & D capabilities and investment, accelerate the speed of information dissemination and establish an information exchange platform. All these can help improve the market competitiveness of Guangdong Province of tilapia industry.