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Fish shortage hits seafood processors
A two-month fishing ban has left seafood processing firms in Vietnam without enough fish to process.
Since last month, some processing firms have reduced their operations by 80 percent because fishing boats have not been bringing in enough fish.
The fish shortage is the result of a fishing ban imposed by China over 128,000 square kilometers of the East Sea claimed by both China and Vietnam.
China has sent ships to enforce the ban to “protect maritime resources,” which will apply from June 1 to August 1 this year over water traditionally fished by Vietnamese fishermen.
Vietnam’s fishing industry has also been hit by this month’s fuel price rise, with the most popular type of fuel increasing from VND12,500 (70 U.S. cents) to VND13,500 (76 cents) a liter from June 10.
A dealer at Tho Quang fish port in the central city Da Nang said she used to buy 300 kilograms of fresh cuttlefish a day. But over the past month she has only been able to buy half that amount.
Previously, the Tho Quang fish port received 150 to 180 tons of seafood a day from fishing boats but in the past fortnight, trawlers have only brought in 100 tons a day, said Nguyen Tuan Ngoc, head of the fish port management board.
The number of boats docking at the port to deliver fish has also fallen from 900 to 700 a day, Ngoc said.
Do Anh Tuan, chairman of Phuoc Tien company, which processes and exports seafood to Japan and South Korea, said his firm’s turnover had fallen by 50 percent in the last month to US$2 million.
As a result, around 80 percent of female workers at seafood processing companies in Vietnam are likely to be laid off, said Nguyen Huu Dung, deputy standing chairman of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).
According to VASEP, exports of Vietnam seafood in the first five months of this year generated $1.3 billion, 9.4 percent less than in the same period last year.
As well as the problems being experienced by fisherman, fish farmers are also doing it tough. Harvests of farmed seafood, such as shrimp, tra and basa catfish, have also dropped considerably.
Unstable prices, disease and insufficient investment have been blamed for the poor output of fish farmers in the Mekong Delta provinces of Ca Mau, Bac Lieu, and Soc Trang.
Do Ngoc Tai, deputy director of Kim Anh seafood processing company in Soc Trang, said he was only able to buy 15 to 20 tons of shrimp a day, not enough to meet his firm’s processing capacity of 100 tons a day.
vietnews
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