RI Sets Fish Production Target At 20 MillionTons

Jakarta, Oct 18 (Antara) - The Maritime and Fishery Ministry has set the country`s fish production target at 20.05 million tons for 2014 . The production will include 6.08 million tons of sea fish and 13.97 million tons of production of fish cultivation, Maritime and Fishery Minister Sharif C Sutardjo said. Shrimp and tuna will remain the main target of production, Sharif said at a coordinating meeting of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry here on Friday. Sharif said the growth target of the GDP of the fishery sector is set at 7.25 percent in 2014 or an increase of 0.77 percentage point from the target set for 2013. He said the target set for 2014 is based on the progress made so far in 2013 especially in industrialization program with the blue economy approach. The program launched by the ministry has shown positive result, he said citing fishery exports in the first half of 2013 reached US$1.97 million with volume at 621,700 tons. "This means a 4.2 percent increase in fish production with trading volume rising 5.3 percent," he said. Shrimp has remained the largest export earner accounting for US$723.6 million or 36.7 percent of the total export earning from the sector. The main countries of export destinations are the United States, Japan, the European Union and China. The figures show that the country has a surplus of US$1.78 billion in trade of fishery products or an increase of 3.5 percent from the previous year. Sharif said with the target to be reached, the ministry has launched a number of programs such as increase in competitiveness through improvement of productivity , efficiency and quality. He said the ministry has discussed with related agencies fund needed for the program including for the construction of infrastructure. He said it is also necessary to increase domestic consumption of fish to 38 kilogram per capita. He said in 2014, the ministry will remain to focus on the acceleration of industrialization of the fishery sector to increase added value through synergy between upstream and downstream business in the fishery sector.