The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2020

MILLION TONNES (LIVE WEIGHT)
SOURCE: FAO.
| 74 |

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THE STATE OF WORLD FISHERIES AND AQUACULTURE 
2020
Export revenue in 2018 was more than 20 times 
the 1976 figure of USD 7.8 billion. In the same 
period, global export quantity increased at 
an annual rate of 3 percent from 17.3 million 
tonnes (live weight equivalent). The relatively 
slower growth rate in volume points to a 
steady increase in unit value over time, a 
reflection both of increasing fish prices and of 
a higher proportion of processed products in 
trade volumes. 
Following the global financial and economic 
crisis of 2008–09, the upward trends in 
international trade in fish and fish products 
generally slowed, reflecting a slowdown in 
world GDP growth that saw several major 
developed and emerging markets lapse into 
periods of recession and weak consumer 
confidence. Both fish trade and total 
merchandise trade then fell steeply in 2015, 
by 10 percent and 13 percent respectively. 
Some of the factors behind this contraction 
included trade sanctions on the Russian 
Federation, economic decline in Brazil and 
the strengthening of the United States dollar 
against an array of currencies, which reduced 
the apparent value of trade conducted in 
those currencies. A recovery was subsequently 
realized in 2016, 2017 and 2018, with respective 
growth rates for trade in fish and fish products 
of 7 percent, 9 percent and 5 percent, as 
economic conditions improved in most of the 
world’s economies and fish prices rose strongly. 
More recently, the escalation of trade tensions 
between two of the world’s largest trading