Title: Fuel subsidy in Ghana's marine artisanal fisheries sector

Subsidies given directly to Ghana’s marine artisanal fisheries have been identified as capacity enhancing subsidies. Of most importance is the premix fuel subsidy which is defined as difference between the price per litre of fuel paid by the artisanal fishers and the national price applied to fuel purchases for other uses. This subsidy program, however, is faced with a lot of challenges. Using the analytical part of the Logical Framework Approach, the causes of the bad influence of the fuel subsidy were identified as negative social, economic and environmental factors. Also the problem of insufficient governance/management system was arising from inadequate fisheries institutional capacity. In a desirable situation, improvement on the influence of fuel subsidy will result in decreased social deviance, improved cost and most importantly, the sustainable usage of the fisheries resources, which will reduce over exploitation. In order to achieve this, sufficient governance/management system was strategically selected as the most relevant, feasibly and easy objective. The West African Regional Fisheries Program (WARFP) adequately addresses this through its components: Good Governance and Sustainable Management of the Fisheries and Reduction of illegal fishing.