China has widely become Pakistan’s chief seafood market, leaving the EU and Japan behind to take the country’s fisheries’ export to a 14 percent boost in July-October 2016, market players said on Monday. Pakistan’s fisheries export surged to $114.787 million in July-October 2016 because of squids and shrimps being mainly shipped to China, as the official figures show a rise of $13.978 million over the period as compared to $100.809 million in July-November 2015. “Squid, Ribbon fish and Kiddi (shrimp) have been arriving in a phenomenal volume to the fisheries harbour for the last one year that boosted up Pakistan’s seafood export”, President Sindh Trawlers Owners and Fishermen Association (STOFA), Habibullah Khan Niazi told Business Recorder. In term of volume, Pakistan seafood export shot up by 23 percent to 46,188 metric tons in July-October 2016 from 10,809 metric tons in July-October 2015, Pakistan Bureau of Statics shows. “With almost 75 percent shrimp export, China has become Pakistan’s main market with squid and ribbon fish”, Niazi said. With ban on foreign countries owned big trawlers, he said that the country’s seas were now relieved from overexploitations of fisheries, saying that the growth in the seafood export this fiscal year had been significant. “The STOFA had struggled a lot to get the big trawlers banned from the government as they had ruined the seas with overfishing”, he added.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2016