Institutional economic partnership analysis of capture based fisheries for empowering the handline tuna fishermen of Ureng Village, Leihitu Sub-district, Indonesia.

A substantial amount of capital is needed in the development of of the fishing business. An attempt has been made by the local government to overcome this problem faced by handline tuna fisher of Ureng Village by providing the credit facility. The problem arises from limited access to small-scale fisher to obtain credit and high-interest rates. The presence of PT Ureng Nusatelu that established a partnership with fishermen from Leihitu Sub-district, in particular with tuna handline fisher from Ureng Village, is expected as a solution to empowering the fishermen. This study aimed to analyze the mechanism and the implementation of institutional partnership, identify the type and strategy of that institution, and assess the performance of the partnership developed in an attempt to empower the handline tuna fisher. This research is expected to contribute to the related fishery agency in developing and empowering handline tuna fisheries. The study lasted for four months from June to September 2019 at Ureng Village, the Sub-District Leihitu. Sampling was collected purposively where data obtained were analyzed with partnership concept analysis, partnership implementation analysis, and partnership performance analysis. The result shows that the partnership developed between PT Ureng Nusatelu with tuna handline fisher of Ureng Village has not been running well. This is mainly due to the socialization of the partnership concept that was not fully accepted by the fishermen and discontinuous monitoring of the program. Performance partnership between PT Ureng Nusatelu and tuna handline fisher measured based on the income was still low, while the transactional cost is very high. At the same time, the performance indicator valued by a partnership group was considered poor, and the participation and perception of partnership members were still low.