Analysis of white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) exports to the Chinese

market

Análisis de las exportaciones de camarón blanco (Litopenaeus vannamei) hacia el mercado de

China

Alex Aurelio Ibarra Velasquez

was to analyze shrimp exports to the Chinese market in the period 2010-2020. The proposal is

to forecast exports and participation in the Chinese market four years into the future. The

methodology applied for the research is descriptive, documentary, quantitative, supported by

journals and scientific articles in databases such as: Latindex, Scopus, and studies related to the

subject. The projections estimated that in 2022 Ecuador will export 1,694,035 thousand dollars

to China, by 2023 this will increase by 10.28% with respect to 2022, reaching 1,868,289

thousand dollars. And finally in 2024 it will export 2,042,543 thousand dollars. White shrimp

exports to China in 2019 have a share of 29.67%. By 2020 the share increased to 32.01%, i.e.

Ecuador became the supplier of shrimp to China after India. In addition, during the period from

2013 to 2020 there will be an average share of 13.27% of shrimp exports from Ecuador to China.

En el 2020 las exportaciones de camarón de Ecuador hacia China pasaron de 2.085.077,3 miles

de dólares en el 2019 a 1.891.383,5 miles de dólares en el 2020 es decir se redujo un -9,29%.

El objetivo de esta investigación fue analizar las exportaciones de camarón hacia el mercado

chino en el periodo 2010-2020. La propuesta es pronosticar cuatro años a futuro las

exportaciones y participación en el mercado chino. La metodología que se aplicó para la

investigación es descriptiva, documental, cuantitativa, apuntalada en revistas y artículos

April - June vol. 1. Num. 13 2022

Para el 2020 se incrementó la participación a 32,01%, es decir paso Ecuador a ser el proveedor

de camarón para China después de la India. Además, durante el periodo del 2013 a 2020 se

tiene una participación media de 13,27% de las exportaciones de camarón desde Ecuador hacia

China. En lo social se estima que el sector camaronero genera 200.000 plazas de trabajo directo

e indirectamente alcanza el 5% de la población Económicamente Activa, en 210.000 hectáreas

de camarón. El camarón por sí solo representa el 1,1% del PIB. Ecuatoriano.

Palabras clave: Exportaciones de camarón; mercado; China

Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) production in Ecuador began in approximately

packing plants, larvae laboratories and feed factories, as well as a series of inputs for

aquaculture activities (Suárez, 2019).

In 1999, Ecuador faced a crisis due to the white spot disease that caused some producers to

close their crops or to wait for alternatives to control the disease. (Aguirre et al., 2019). Shrimp

farming in captivity supplies most of the volume to the world market; however, it has also been

affected by the outbreak of diseases and price variations associated with the high volume of

production in 2018 and 2019, leading to low market levels, thereby reducing the participation

of shrimp in world trade and affecting the prices of these aquaculture products in international

markets. (FAO, 2020; Uzcátegui et al., 2016, p. 165).

The growth of this sector has positioned shrimp as the second most important export product

In this context, the objective of the research is to analyze white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei)

exports four years into the future. Therefore, the question that motivates the need for the study

The inductive scientific method will be used, which is the reasoning that orients from the

observation of particular cases to general conclusions, it starts from particular statements to

generalize. It generalizes inferences from a set of evidence. The inference is from the bottom

up. And the deductive that defines this method which is based on formal reasoning in which

the conclusion is obtained by the form of the judgment, from which it starts. The derivation is

necessary (Cabezas et al., 2018, p. 16).

Descriptive and documentary research was applied to , the latter defined as the collection of

news on books, files, laboratory reports or field work published Baena (2017) as the collection

specifically with Grupo Empresarial Rojas, which is headquartered in the city of Machala and

has four production units in the provinces of Guayas and El Oro.

A quantitative approach was used, with a linear regression analysis to project exports; to select

the compiled data, the most important variables were chosen according to the subject of the

study, as well as technical and statistical information from the National Chamber of

Aquaculture of Ecuador, Trade Map, Central Bank of Ecuador (BCE), Internal Revenue

Service, also taking into account the criteria of experts and experts in the shrimp sector.

April - June vol. 1. Num. 13 2022

According to (Chumpitaz, 2014), China's market is the largest in the world, with 1,361 million

inhabitants, which is equivalent to the sum of inhabitants of the USA, Brazil, Nigeria, Russia,

111 million households. The cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Guangdong, Tianjin and Zhejiang

This country China has the world's largest market for seafood products with a total

consumption of 38,738,000 tons, which is higher than the sum of the nine major international

markets. The demand for quality proteins and the high interest in healthy eating led to an

average annual growth of 5.9% for 2018.

China's continued improvements in logistics and storage capacity have led to an increase in

seafood consumption in inland regions of the country. The high consumption of shellfish in

southern China, the remaining regions prefer fish and crustaceans.

The Pacific white shrimp variety (Litopenaeus vannamei) is the most important shrimp

cultivated in Ecuador. This aquaculture production has been perfected for more than thirty

the order of 3,866.46 billion dollars.

April - June vol. 1. Num. 13 2022

Figure 1. White shrimp exports to China and projection through 2024

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Figure 2. Exports of white shrimp from Ecuador to the World and projection until 2024.

*Projection

Source: TradeMap (2021)

The following table 4 presents China's imports of white shrimp from 2013 to 2020 and

its projection to 2024.