THE government would allow us-ing farmland for other purposes such as fish farm only when the farmers ensure Good Aquaculture Practices-GAqP.

The Union Minister for Agri-culture, Livestock and Fisheries Dr Aung Thu made the comment at a coordination meeting on development of fish and prawn farming yesterday at his office in Nay Pyi Taw

“After getting the good laboratory results for chemical residues on aquaculture products from Myanmar, EU has given green light to Myanmar to export the fishery products to their countries. However, the fish farms which have got the green light from the EU would get export permission from our ministry only after they practice the GAqP,” said Union Minister Dr Aung Thu. Earlier, only fish caught in the wild were permitted for export to the EU market.
Myanmar has over Myanmar exports fishery products to 40 foreign countries, including countries in the European Un-ion, China, Saudi Arabia, the US, Japan, Singapore, and Thailand.

There are 400,000 acres of fish and prawn breeding farms across the country. Besides, the country is rich in natural water resources for producing fish and prawns. Out of over 400,000 acres of fish and prawn farms, only 10,000 acres practice GAqP system. Currently, about 500 fish farms on 9254 acres own are cer-tified with GAqP. In the 2017-2018 FY, some 568,227 tonnes of fishery products, worth US$717.7 million, were exported, according to MFF statistics.

Myanmar shipped fishery products worth $533.29 million to foreign countries over the past seven and half months (Oct-May) of financial year 2018-2019, Commerce Ministry data showed.

MNA

(Translated by TTN)

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