Assesing seasonal price behaviour of selected dried fish varieties in Sri Lanka

Dried fish plays an important role in the national economy in multiple ways including minimizing post-harvest losses of fish providing a source of animal protein, enlarging livelihoods, utilizing idling labor into the production process and as a dish, especially for rural poor. Dried fish prices have increased drastically from 2012 to 2019 compared to fish and chicken. Being the key determinant of demand, price is crucial on consumption, dried fish demand and industry performance: increasing prices, decrease the demand, which adversely effects on dried fish industry from 2012 pushing dried fish consumption to third place. Therefore, this study aims to assess the price behavior of selected dried fish varieties and appropriate price forecasting models that could be feed into policy formulation for reasonable prices and price variation during the year. A quantitative approach was adopted gathering national average price data from secondary sources such as Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian and Research Institute, Department of Census and Statistics and other relevant institute. Three dried fish varieties which are highly consumed by the populace were selected representing large pelagic-skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis) and double-spotted queenfish (Scomberoides lysan) and small pelagic- gold-striped sardinella (Sardinella gibbosa). Average monthly retail price data from January 2007 to December 2019 were considered to analysis. Seasonal price variation and price indices were calculated for the three varieties in terms of real market prices. Analysis revealed highest dried fish prices in June and July months, corresponding with south-west monsoon. In contrast, lower prices have been reported during the north-east monsoon for large pelagic, months of January and February. Gold-striped sardinella indicated the highest price index in middle month of the both monsoon seasons. Highest seasonal price indexes for large pelagic varieties are indicated during May-September following the south-west monsoon. The Real Market Price (RMP) of all three dried fish varieties demonstrated a fluctuating pattern with a slight increment throughout the year. The same fluctuating patterns are observed in relation to moving average price, seasonality impact removed price and seasonality around moving average price of each three varieties separately. However, prices of three varieties are strongly correlated (r=0.941<, p=0.00) with each other. The cubic price forecasting model is the best fit model of price forecasting for all the analyzed varieties. Besides, the Quadratic model can be used to predict the price of analyzed large pelagic varieties. The ARIMA analysis revealed that ARIMA (2,1,12) is the best fit model for price forecasting of skipjack tuna while ARIMA (0,1,0) for double spotted queen and gold stripped sardinella forecasting. Having a distinct seasonality impact on dried fish prices, the policies need to be focused on price stabilizing mechanisms to assure a certain and stable performances in the dried fish industry in Sri Lanka ensuring affordability to the majority in Sri Lanka.