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Abstract
A bioeconomic model of reservoir aquaculture in northern Vietnam, called BRAVO,
is presented. The biological model is based on a conventional von Bertalanffy growth
function and the economic model is a net revenue function. The greatest source of
costs for the operation are restocking costs (75 percent) and contract labour costs (18
percent). The net revenue of the operations is approximately 9.7 million VND
(approximately US$615). The greatest area of uncertainty in the model is harvesting
efficiency, which is very low (ranging between 5 and 26 percent). The harvesting
efficiency, along with the length of time between stocking and harvest, has a large
impact on net revenue. Reservoir aquaculture has developed in an ad hoc way in
Vietnam. Including reservoir aquaculture into government fisheries development
plans with research focused on development of fingerling production, preparation of
flooded land for aquaculture production and strengthening institutional arrangements
for reservoir leasing and credit arrangements, is likely to lead to capitalisation,
increased investment and therefore greater revenues for local fishing populations.