Impact of financing aquaculture on selected economic indicators in South Africa: cointegration approach

ABSTRACT

The South African government has made considerable investments to ensure the sustainability and productivity of the aquaculture sector. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of financing aquaculture on economic growth, unemployment, and entrepreneurship period of 1994 to 2019. The study employs an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to check the dynamic causality between the study variables. The results show that there is a negative and statistically insignificant relationship between aquaculture financing and economic growth. Furthermore, aquaculture financing is positively associated with unemployment and entrepreneurship. The study encourages linkages between aquaculture smallholder farmers and commercial farmers to exchange knowledge and training. Therefore, revamping aquaculture strategies to promote productivity in the sector is necessary. Improvement in the aquaculture technological system is required, which can be achieved through better facilities and greater financial support to boost the aquaculture sector. There is therefore a need to invest more in technological innovation.

KEYWORDS:

• South Africa
• economic growth
• aquaculture
• financing
• ARDL

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The study was funded by National Research Foundation (NRF); Research and Innovation Support and Advancement (RISA). Grant no. 120625.