ZAHID CHUGHTAI
Colombo (Sri Lanka): Fish & Shrimp farming has the potential to earn more than US $2billions per year provided, a pro-export policy is enacted, fish farmers are taught to implement Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and exempting duties and taxes at different stages of this sector. It will help bring down the cost of production for the Inland Aquaculture Farmers who at present are engaged over approximately more than 250,000 acres of land all over Pakistan. These could fetch handsome foreign exchange if incentivized by exempting sales tax on fish & shrimps feed, seed (babies) of fish & shrimps, exempt duties & taxes on all kinds of import of fish & shrimp for brood stocks and machinery for manufacturing Aquaculture feed or use in Aquaculture farming. Similarly, these farmers should be provided electricity at subsidized rates. Haider Ali Director of an agro-based company observed this while talking to this scribe at the “AquaCon”, an event organized by the US Soya Bean Export Council (USSEC) recently in Colombo to promote investment in technology-based scientific farming in Aquaculture. Aquaculture startups from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka pitched their projects to the investors at the event. Haider regretted that Inland Aquaculture Farming could not catch the attention of the government because for fish consumption we mainly relied on open water (sea, river etc) catching which now a day is reducing gradually. The reason for less productivity in open water due to the use of small mesh-size nets for the last so many years which were harmful to baby fishes and did not let them grow ultimately resulting in genocide and changing the ocean and river ecosystem too. For the last few years, the Fisheries Development Board (FDB) was working on improving Inland Aquaculture Farming by conducting various development programs and trying hard to educate farmers. However, still, the desired results had not been achieved. To achieve goals and increase per-acre production FDB along with Provincial Fisheries Department (PFD) had to work hard and transfer the proper and practical knowledge to farmers in an efficient and cost-effective manner. Though at the Provincial level, there were lots of fish hatcheries but not a single shrimp hatchery was available in Pakistan. To improve Inland Aquaculture Farming in Pakistan, the Federal Government with the support of all Provincial Governments should focus on increasing the number of hatcheries with an increase of production from 500-1000kg to 3000-4000kg per acre by educating fish farmers to increase the exports and meet local demand as well. Bangladesh Inland Fish Pond Culture achieved 2,405,415MT from 495,000 hectares (2017-18) whereas Pakistan is no way near to them. Pakistan’s Inland Fish Pond Culture production is not more than approximately 200,000MT whereas Pakistan can increase aquaculture in more land area than Bangladesh using those lands which are saline and not suitable for agricultural purposes. Currently, Bangladesh has 100 fish processing plants out of which 76 are approved by the European Commission and exporting more than 60-70% of its total production (sea, river and inland culture) to Europe, the USA and Japan whereas Pakistan has very few processing plants in which only three processing plants are approved from European Commission, Haider added. Another grey area of this sector was that all fisheries departments both in Federal and Provincial governments did not have accurate data on production which should be streamlined, he regretted. For the last 3-4 years some fish farmers were trying to improve per acre production capacity by using fish feed but unfortunately, this sector was again ignored by the Federal Government in the supplementary budget of 2022 by abolishing the exemption of sales tax on fish feed which was exempted before the said supplementary budget whereas sales tax is exempted on poultry and cattle feed. Haider was of the view that above mentioned facility not only enhances the farmers’ capacity to increase per acre production but may also attract foreign investments which ultimately result in an increase in GDP and create employment in the sector, he concluded.
