Statistics on Australian fisheries production, gross value of production (GVP) and trade is required to meet a wide range of demands.

First: To assist in making investment decisions and planning of marketing strategies.

Second: To provide the basis for setting of research priorities by fisheries managers, industry and research organisations and the selection of a research portfolio by funding agencies. The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry through ABARE, contributes to a number of international databases including databases managed by the FAO and OECD. Information at the international level can be important in relation to international negotiations on issues such as transboundary fisheries, in analysing trade opportunities and threats and is essential for participating in fora such as APEC and WTO.

Third: The gross value of production for specific fisheries are used for determining research and development levies for the FRDC and for determining industry contributions to research. Because the estimates form the basis for research levies for each fishery, it is important for the system to be independent from those involved in the management and marketing processes to ensure neutrality and integrity of the estimates.

As identified at the meeting in late October 2009, between ABARE and industry stake holders, there is also a need for other economic data that is not currently incorporated in the AFS. In particular there is a need to ensure that the method used to estimate GVP in each jurisdiction is robust and consistently applied. To meet this need, this project incorporates an audit component, to commence in 2010-11, to assess the extent to which the method used to calculate GVP is robust and consistent across jurisdictions, and to determine the fishery related data sets that currently exist across jurusdictions.