Economic Viability of Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) Cage Culture in the Lake Azuei, Haiti

Abstract

Haiti has a great potentiality for aquaculture, nevertheless, no economic information are available to help for a sustainable development of this sector. This study aims to analyze the economic viability of tilapia production in Lake Azuei and figure out the minimal requirement for its success. We collected financial and performance data from a commercial company operating cages in the lake. A bioeconomic model was used for financial performance. Crystal ball application was used to analyze risk regarding to survival rates, feed price and selling price. The baseline model shows a production system with US $ 668 375 annual profit and a high IRR of 33.8 %, the feed cost is the highest production cost: 34.9 % of the total cost and the production cost of US $ 2.574/ Kg. Risk analysis was analyzed with a triangular distribution for survival rate in range from 0.30 to 0.90 with 0.88 as the likeliest value; for market price in a range from US$ 2 to US$ 8 with US $ 6 as the likeliest price; for feed price from a range or US$1 to US$ 3 with US$ 1.16 as the likeliest price; for an combination of survival rate and market price and for a combination of survival rate and food price there is probability to have negative return on the survival rate scenario. The enterprise is not sustainable to change in survival rate and market price. Farmers should improve their skills to maintain high survival rate to gain higher profit. As well, government should realize research and apply policy to stabilize the market price and reduce feed cost to achieve stability for the aquaculture.