The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2020

particularly in East and Southeast Asia. 
While developed markets still dominate fish 
imports, the importance of developing countries 
as consumers as well as producers of fish and 
fish products has been steadily increasing. 
Urbanization, improved disposable income and 
expansion of the seafood-consuming middle 
class, have been fuelling demand growth in 
emerging markets that is far outpacing that 
observed in their developed counterparts. 
In 2018, fish imports by developing countries 
represented 31 percent of the global total by 
14
Here, the European Union is considered as the EU27.
value and 49 percent by quantity (live weight), 
compared with 12 percent and 19 percent, 
respectively, in 1976. As consumer purchasing 
power increases and preferences evolve, an 
increasing proportion of production that would 
previously have been exported to developed 
markets is now being directed to meet the 
demand of regional and domestic consumers. 
Countries such as Brazil and China are now 
large consumers of high-value species such 
as shrimp and salmon. For LIFDCs, the value 
of imports has been increasing at an average 
annual growth rate of about 6 percent in the 
period 1976–2018, but in most cases these 
values remain at very low levels relative to the 
rest of the world.
In 2018, the average value of imports of fish 
and fish products by developing countries 
was USD 1.6 per kilogram (live weight 
equivalent), while the corresponding figure for 
developed countries was USD 3.4 per kilogram. 
Thus, while the import volumes of the two 
groups were comparable, developed countries 
accounted for about 69 percent of global import 
value in 2018 and, according to preliminary 
data, also in 2019. This discrepancy is in large