Impressive economic strides expected in fisheries sector

foreign earnings and revenue to the country it is not to the anticipated level, judging from the enormous potential the country is endowed with.

The National Economic Survey report (2009) reveals that the industry employs more than four million people in fisheries and related activities.

Again in 2009 the fisheries sector contributed 1.3 per cent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the per capita fish consumption is 8.0 kilogram and about 30 per cent of animal protein consumption in Tanzania is from fish.

This country has therefore all the reasons and means to transform people’s living standards, thanks to the country’s strategic and geographical location, in addition to the vivid political will the government has shown in visionary utilization of the natural resources, including the aquatic reserve base.

For example, the Fisheries Sector Development Programme (FSDP) has been designed to involve investment in fisheries resources protection and conservation, stakeholder empowerment, fisheries knowledge and information, fish and fishery products utilization and marketing. This remained shelved for years.

In short, the programme articulates issues on sustainable fisheries resources management and utilization, economic growth, empowerment, poverty reduction, institutional strengthening and Public Private Partnership in support of service delivery.

The plans are quite nice as designed to take on board interventions that are geared towards sustainable fisheries resources management, development, conservation and utilization to be implemented at national and local levels perhaps under the public and the private sector framework.

The country’s territorial sea covers about 64,000 square kilometres and a coastal line of 1,424kms and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is up to 200 nautical miles covering an area of 223,000km2 providing the country with additional marine area and fisheries resources apart from lakes and rivers.

Unfortunately, deep sea fishing that could guarantee revenue to the nation remained literally uncared-for since independence for explanation that the country lacked proper fishing gear and surveillance facilities to protect the waters.
Of late, the government has walked its talk by taking a bold step to purchase two passenger aircraft from Canada to shake off the embarrassment of the nation not having a sound national carrier for many years.

Under the same initiative, we are convinced that similar gallant measures will be taken to purchase surveillance boats, the action to be followed by progressive construction of fish landing harbour. These are necessary steps towards the establishment of fish processing industries along the coastline.

Identification of different revenue generating sources deserves support as we believe that deep sea fishing will be accorded justifiable attention for the nation to benefit more from the abundant marine resources.

Again, it is important that concerned authorities make additional efforts to impart knowledge to artisanal fishing communities on modern fishing technology to raise their income and perhaps end the irony of fish being sold more expensive than meat in Dar es Salaam.

The relevance to the national desire to establish modern fish processing industries along the coastline cannot be over-emphasized because protection of deep sea waters without exploitation of the resources would be meaningless and perhaps costly in terms of surveillance patrols. We believe some impressive economic strides will be witnessed shortly in this sector.