Myanmar needs to address the rarity of fishery resources in order to boost fishery exports

In order to boost fishery exports, the Myanmar Fishery Product Processors and Exporters Association highlighted the need to address the rarity of resources in its territorial waters used by commercial companies.

“Because of the rarity of raw material [fish and prawn] our fishery processing plants can only prepare 3-4 tons of fish products per day, as opposed to a Vietnamese plant that is producing between 170-200 tons per day. All of this is because of a lack fish for the processing plants,’’ said U Tun Aye, President of the association.

Most of the fish and prawn exported from Myanmar are caught in natural settings, which decreases the fishery resources available. The natural resources — fish and prawn — will only recover when they are bred scientifically in commercial fish farms, the stakeholders in the sector said.

There are existing farms that breed fish in controlled settings, but not enough of them. “In order to boost fishery exports, Myanmar needs to produce more fish and prawn for processing,” U Tun Aye said.

Despite the fact that Myanmar has 21 fishery products processing factories that meet EU standards, these factories cannot operate at their full potential because of lack of raw materials.

“This problem — rarity of raw materials — began after the Cyclone Nargis in 2008. I don’t know that this is because of a lack of financial resources, or simply destroyed habitat. Fishermen would catch around 100-200 barrels per day of prawn in the past, and a barrel contained 200 liters. Now they only manage to catch 10 or 20 barrels per day. Therefore, it is even harder to buy prawn. Thus, we need to breed scientifically,’’ said U Ye Hlaing Win, Head of Shwe Yamone plant at Hlaing Thar Yar Industrial Zone.

Because of this lack of raw materials, Myanmar generates relatively lesser amount of income from fishery export compared to neighboring countries. While Myanmar generates around $700 million from fishery export, Thailand and Vietnam generate $7 billion and $8 billion respectively.

(Myanmar Business Today: https://www.mmbiztoday.com/articles/myanmar-needs-address-rarity-fishery-resources )

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