Ben Tre promotes the aquaculture and management of fishing boats (25-04-2019)
On the afternoon of April 17th, 2019, Deputy Minister of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) Phung Duc Tien and the delegation of the MARD had a working session with the leaders of Ben Tre province on the situation of fisheries development and the results of the implementation of combating IUU fishing in Ben Tre province.
Over the past years, the growth rate of the fisheries sector of Ben Tre has always been high. Up to now, the province has 3,975 registered fishing boats, of which offshore fishing ships account for 52.2%, annual capture volume is over 200,000 tons. Fisheries logistics base basically meets the development demand of fishing industry with three fishing ports, two storm shelter for fishing vessels, 32 wooden shell and mechanical engineering shipbuilding facilities with new shipbuilding capacity reached 160 ships/year. The whole province now has 160 cooperative fishing groups, with 1,850 ships participating.
Aquaculture is developing steadily. The provincial total farming area is about 46,000 ha. In particular, shrimp farming is 35,000 ha, intensive tra fish farming is 770 ha, mollusk farming is 5,200 ha. In particular, the province has more than 600 ha of two-phase shrimp farming with an average productivity of 60 to 70 tons/ha water surface/crop (three crops per year). The whole province has 13 seafood processing factories serving for export processing with a design capacity of 150,000 tons, but mainly for processing tra fish and clam (no shrimp processing factory yet). Main export markets are Japan, USA, EU, Central and South America, Asia, etc.
Regarding the situation of combating IUU fishing, the People's Committee of Ben Tre province proactively proposed to build coordination regulations in the management of marine capture between eight provinces including provinces of Binh Thuan, Tien Giang, Ben Tre, Tra Vinh, Soc Trang, Bac Lieu, Ca Mau and Kien Giang. In addition, to ensure the unified and decisive leadership and direction of the political system from provincial to grassroots levels, the Provincial Party Committee has issued direction documents to strengthen the prevention, reducing and ending fishing vessels and fishermen illegally fishing in foreign waters.
Deputy Minister Phung Duc Tien said that in the first months of 2019, country’s agriculture sector as well as Ben Tre province had a good growth rate. Ben Tre province has issued many documents on agricultural restructuring, including many documents related to the implementation of 2017 Fisheries Law. In the coming time, the province needs to pay attention and direct drastically, handle fishing boats violating foreign waters, manage ships in and out of ports, strictly control record books for capture fishing vessels, assuring food safety and hygiene, building construction facilities of harbors, etc. to make changes in the implementation of activities combating IUU fishing.
Thu Hoàn