DIRECTORATE OF FISHERIES

Most of the tra fish farmers in the area purchased fingerlings mainly from farmers in Dong Thap and An Giang provinces. Because of the unpredictable supplies and demand in fingerlings, famers faced many difficulties occurred by imbalance between supply and demand of fingerlings. 
On the other hand, tra fish fingerlings’ quality depends on broodstock’s quality which has not been strictly managed in recent time. On March 24th 2017, during a dialogue meeting with An Giang Province, The Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, had agreed to invest more in the project based on 3-level high quality tra fish fingerlings. Grounded on the support from the MARD, the People's Committee of An Giang province have contributed actively on drafting a project on coalition production of 3-level high quality tra fish fingerlings for Mekong Delta in An Giang", took into consideration of opinions from all provinces in tra fish production areas, Ministries, specialists, scientists, enterprises and farmers.
Deputy Director, Ms. Vo Thi Thanh Van, from An Giang Department of Agriculture and Rural Development had stated that the total area of tra fish farming in An Giang province in February 2018 was about 770.6 hectares,equivalents to 93.75% in 2017. The output was at 49.000 tons during the first two months in early 2018, which is an equivalent to 102.18% parallel to 2017. All tra fish farmers were very excited thanks to a slight increase of tra fish price, at the rate from VND 31 to 32 thousand per kilogram. As a result, the price of fingerlings has also increased, at the rate between VND 2-7 thousand per kilogram (sized 30 units/ kg).
Moreover, the agricultural sector of An Giang in 2018 will continue to pursue sustainable development goal (SDGs) by 2020, and orientation to 2025; Implementing the plan on farming, processing tra fish and aquaculture farming on the river; especially the contents of the project of coalition production of 3-level high quality tra fish fingerlings for Mekong Delta. 
Many experts had stated that the price of tra fish continues to increase in recent months because of high demand of China and Hong Kong market. However, experts also  warned that this market demand was not stable. Therefore, the farmers should  pay attention carefully when the price increased as lessons learned in the past.
In 2017, the breeding area of An Giang province was at 905 hectares, of which tra fish accounted for 706 hectares. The total number of fingerlings was up to 1.305 million, of which tra fish accounted for 850 million fingerlings. In the first two months of 2018, the area of tra fish farming accounted for nearly 500 hectares, an increase of 7.2% compared with the same period last year. Production output reached 256 million fishes, an increase of 4.49%. Currently, the demand for fingerlings is very high leading to high price of fingerlings in the last 2 months. 

Le Mai