Thesis, Undergraduate (B.S. Agribusiness Economics)--U.P. Mindanao

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Tuna is one of the fish species that is regarded with high value today. In the international trade, the fresh, frozen or canned tuna is recognized to be economically significant. Despite being an established industry, the canned tuna industry in the Philippines encounter problems such as price fluctuations, increasing costs, inefficiencies on the operations also the emerging tuna producing countries. Hence, this study aimed to determine the level of total factor productivity and identify the possible external and internal factors involved in the performance of the four canning corporations in General Santos City over time as well as know the narrative about the improvement or decline on the operations of the selected tuna canning corporations. This study used financial ratio analysis to evaluate the canning corporations' financial performance and an output-based Malmquist index to determine the total factor productivity of the firms. Among the four canning corporations, only YC Canning Corporation is the most profitable and had the positive TFP growth. In the year 2009-2010 and 2011-2012 both had positive TFP growth. Results indicated that the main driver for the changes in the total factor productivity of the canning corporations was technological change. This implies that the improvement and/or decline of the corporations' performance depends on the general situation, highly regarding the process of tuna and the management of the corporations.