Washington, July 9, 2025 (Lusa) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has stated that Guinea-Bissau’s fish exports deserve greater representation, exceed the value of cashew sales, and decisively influence indicators such as GDP and debt.
"The marked dominance of cashew exports, as is commonly perceived, adequately represents only part of the true state of economic diversification in Guinea-Bissau," reads a technical background note to the country’s latest analysis report, dated this month and signed by economists Nour Bouzouita, Yugo Koshima and Babacar Sarr.
In their analysis of the fishing sector and its implications for Guinea-Bissau’s macroeconomic indicators, IMF economists point out that “industrial fishing production is significant” in this Portuguese-speaking African country and detail that “the volume of catches in the Exclusive Economic Zone has reached around 167,000 tonnes per year over the last five years,” following the reactivation of the fishing agreement with the European Union in 2014.
“Using fish landing prices in Portuguese ports obtained by EUROSTAT, we estimate the value of catches at €310 million per year on average over the last five years, a figure that exceeds the value of cashew exports, which amounted to €201 million per year over the same period,” adds the IMF.
Cashews play a more nuanced role in Guinea-Bissau’s economic growth than the general perception suggests, the IMF’s analysis shows that “if Guinea-Bissau recorded all catches by industrial fishing vessels as official exports, they would have added 20.8% to GDP per year on average over the last five years, more than cashew nut exports, which accounted for 13.4% of GDP”.
This, they point out, “would drastically alter the picture of the main macroeconomic indicators”, such as the current account balance, which would show a significant surplus in all those years.
In 2022, for example, the government would adjust nominal GDP by 20%, which in turn would reduce the public debt ratio from 80.7% to 67.1% of GDP in that year, with potentially significant implications for international investors’ choices.
In the technical note, analysts from the IMF’s African department explain that Guinea-Bissau’s fish exports benefit from clear origin attribution to ensure accurate representation.
"Reports from counterparties [countries that buy fish caught in Guinea-Bissau waters] include a significant volume of fish imports from Guinea-Bissau, and the authorities’ official export data currently omits these transactions; if fish exports were included, the share of cashew nuts would be limited to 65% of total exports,” the article consulted by Lusa states.
Fish exports from Guinea-Bissau would be “at least double those recorded in official data if exports from industrial fishing vessels were formalised in Guinea-Bissau”, rather than accounting for them “in other countries in the region, from where Guinean fish is sent to its final destinations in Europe and Asia”.
The IMF also said that several countries ’hide’ the true origin of the fish because Guinea-Bissau does not have European Union certification for illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, which meant that in 2023 purchasing countries reported less than 15% of catches, “making the rest invisible in international trade data”..
Fish from Guinea-Bissau "still needs to obtain the quality certification required to export to the EU, which raises serious concerns about IUU if a third country imports fish from Guinea-Bissau and re-exports it to the EU, and is likely to encourage buyers in third countries to omit declarations of fish imports from Guinea, concealing its origin," the IMF warned.
MBA/ADB // ADB.
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