FTA 체결이 한국 수산업에 미치는 영향과 대응방안

Abstract

With increase in the quantity of world trade by the development of Information and communication technology and logistics, the pattern of world trade negotiation has changes formed into multilateral form by WTO.

However, this multilateral negotiation has many difficulties in meeting various needs of member countries. As a result, its progress is somewhat in the stagnant status.

Under this circumstance, it comes prevalent that each country contracts FTAs with interested countries in order to maximize economic welfares by increasing the quantity of trade. Consequently, most countries who are members in WTO are currently contracting FTAs.

Because the economy of Korea is greatly dependent upon exports of industrial goods, it is inevitable that Korea try to make use of expected benefits of FTA and to positively contract FTAs with other countries.

However, in spite of its usefulness, FTAs with other countries especially southeast countries were not contracted much. It was mainly because circumstances in each country were different and mainly the persons concerned were in opposition to contracting FTAs for the protection of the first industry such as agriculture and fisheries. Nevertheless, Korea-Chile FTA was initially contracted in April 1, 2004.

Following to the Korea-Chile FTA, Korea is trying to contract FTAs with many interested countries. If FTAs are contracted, the industries which are competitive in the markets would have positive impacts. On the contrary, the others that are uncompetitive would lose market shares. Especially, it is generally expected that the fishing industry would have negative impacts from contracting FTAs.

The economy of fishing industry in Korea becomes worse because the fishing grounds have been significantly reduced by a EEZ scheme and the fish stocks have declined. Furthermore, Korea initially is having recently a deficit in fisheries trade.

Under this background, this study aims to estimate impacts of FTAs on the fishing industry. As the scope of the study, the impact of the Korea-Chile FTA on the fishing industry was evaluated. In addition, the potential impacts of FTAs with Singapore, Japan, China, ASEAN, EFTA, United States, Mexico, Canada were also analyzed. Based on results of analyses, some ways to minimize negative effects were considered.