HANOI: The Directorate of Fisheries under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) has set a goal for 2017 of US$ 7.1 billion in seafood export revenue. It targets total fishery production output of 6.85 million tonnes for the whole year, including 3.05 million tonnes of sea catch and 3.8 million tonnes from aquaculture, said Nguyen Ngoc Oai, deputy head of the agency at a conference on December 30, reports VNA.
MARD Deputy Minister Vu Van Tam held that in order to fulfil the goal, the fisheries sector should focus on better exploiting the country’s advantages in aquatic farming. He noted that currently, the country has about 700,000 hectares of brackish water shrimp farm area, including 95,000 hectares of industrial shrimp farms and more than 600,000 hectares of extensive farms with low productivity. Therefore, it is possible to raise the production, the deputy minister said while stressing the need to better control diseases and expand market. For pangasius, a key export staple, Deputy Minister Tam said attention should be focused on tackling market barriers in import countries and on building a strategy for developing national product of pangasius, creating high quality products with strong trademark.
Tam also highlighted the need to create a breakthrough in pangasius consumption in the potential domestic market with 90 million people. He revealed that the ministry will organise a large-scale trade fair specializing in pangasius in Hanoi in 2017. According to the Directorate of Fisheries, in 2016, seafood exports fetched about $7 billion. Total aquatic production output of the country reached over 6.7 million tonnes, including 3.1 million tonnes of sea catch and more than 3.6 million tonnes of farmed products. Total water surface area for aquaculture was 1.3 million hectares.
