Fishery Faces New Hardship

According to the report of the Ministry of Fisheries, the fishery exploitation has been very good in recent months. Anchovy and saurel appeared in large volumes of catching fisheries; therefore, fishing boats can operate in a long time at sea. Several northern localities like Quang Ninh Province and Haiphong City have seen massive schools of jellyfishes and fishermen catch them to sell to processing units or to Chinese traders.

However, the number of newly built ships is small while the existing ones have small capacities. Hence, not many boats can fish offshore. What's more, the rise in prices of petroleum products has negative impacts on fishing output. Particularly, Ca Mau has a total of 3,618 operating fishing boats, which spend additional VND4.4 billion (US$275,000) on fuels a month. The fuel cost is estimated to jump to VND35.2 billion (US$2.2 million) a month by the end of 2006. Meanwhile, prices of almost all seafood and aquatic products remained unchanged. To date, many boats stay idle due to too high fuel costs.

In addition, the aftermaths of the Chanchu typhoon, which took place May 15, caused great losses to central coastal provinces, especially Danang City, Quang Nam and Quang Ngai provinces. As a result, the exploitation is heavily affected. The fishing output in May reached 166,500 tonnes, raising the total output in the January-May period to estimated 799,500 tonnes, fulfilling 40.96 per cent of this year's target and only increasing 0.9 per cent compared with last year's five same months.

In export, the export activities to the European market are very positive. The export of fish fillets to European and Asian countries is expanding. The price of fish fillets is from US$3.4 to US$3.5 a kilo. Enterprises are seeking new fish resources to meet the high demand in Europe.

According to the Fisheries Ministry, export revenues of the fishery sector were US$1.095 billion, representing a year on year increase of 25.48 per cent but only fulfilling 39.12 per cent of the this year's target. The soaring value is attributed to the avian flu influence although the supply is not high.

However, the ministry also informed that the lack of materials for export processing industry keeps going on. Each day, fish processing factories in An Giang Province need 600-700 tonnes of fish but the fishermen fail to supply enough.

 

Although farmers have invested in raising tra/basa fish, it must take at least one or two months to have adult fish. Prices of tra/basa fish continue rising in recent days, at some VND14,000-14,500 a kilo, the highest since early 2006. This is a good reason for farmers to raise these fishes.