Abstract:

Many sectors in all around the world including fisheries have been affected from COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this study was to evaluate the early effects of the pandemic (COVID-19) on the fishery sector that have been conducting in regional scale considering the fishery sector in Hatay province from Turkey. A series of interviews were accomplished with the peoples/firms/enterprises belonging stakeholders (fishermen, retailer, wholesaler and exporters) to question the fishing effort and trade statistics covering the first quarter of 2019 and 2020. The most negative impact of the pandemic in terms of trade (in quantity, kg) was on the exporter with 65% decrease followed by wholesalers (35%), retailers (17% for fishing products and 14% aquaculture products). It was concluded that ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system should be constructed by the government to cope with the problems resulting from pandemics in the fisheries sectors. In this sense, within a decentralization aspect, local cooperatives would play an important role in setting a sector-oriented ERP.

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