KARACHI, Nov 6: The Karachi Fish Harbour is working on a plan aimed at enhancing export earnings from fish by ten times through value addition. Presently, the country earns around $150 million from fish exports but it could go up to $1.5 billion in five years.
In the absence of proper and modern technology and upgradation processing plants for fish and fish products, most of the exports fetch lowest price when compared with other exporting countries that market their produce after value addition.
“The need of the hour is not to stress for larger exports of fish but to concentrate on value-addition which could easily enhance our export earnings by five to ten times in a short span of five years,” the chairman Karachi Fish Harbour Authority (KFHA) and FCS (Fishermen Cooperative Society) Commodore Syed Tayyab Naqvi told Dawn.
To achieve this goal, he said, the KFH plans to shift the shipping building yard from its front location to the back yard and allocate the vacated land to fish processing plants that would have state of the art technology for value-addition in fish and fish products.
During last two years, Naqvi said, only two modern processing plants were installed, but the country needs more such plants in order to enhance foreign exchange earning through value-addition.
He said there is an urgent need for diversification in fish and fish products which could be achieved only through value-addition. And that could be attained by developing aqua culture on the coastline of the Sindh province and in some parts of Balochistan, he added.
Citing an example, the Commodore Syed Tayyab Naqvi said that an exporter last year ventured into fish paste exports popularly known as Surmimi, and earned $250,000. If there is proper and large size plants, the country could easily earn between $200 to #300 million in a year on export of Surmimi, which is tasteless and odourless but could always be added with desired taste and odour, he added.
As a matter of fact, he said there is only one unit in the KFH which has the know-how of value-addition and it has already successfully exported to the US ‘crab meat’ in a ready-to-eat state. He stressed that we need such plants which could enhance the value of fish and fish products and earn more foreign exchange for the country.
He also unfolded several measures taken by him over the past three years for increasing the much needed funds and revenue for both the organizations — KFH and FCS — being headed by him as the chairman.
Back in the year 1999, he said the FCS earning was around Rs40 million, which has been increased manifold to Rs140 million. Similarly, he said the KFA used to collect Rs0.5 to 0.6 million in revenue per month but now it is between Rs2.5 to Rs3 million per month.