INSOPESCA's Gilberto Gimenez stated a lack of investment was behind the registered decline in domestic shrimp production. (Photo: INSOPESCA)

Shrimp output trickles amid meager private investment

VENEZUELA
Friday, July 17, 2009, 02:20 (GMT + 9)

The decline in shrimp production registered in Venezuela since 2007 is a product of a lack of investment by part of sector industrialists, affirms the president of the Socialist Fisheries and Aquaculture Institute (INSOPESCA), Gilberto Gimenez.

According to the official, Venezuelan executives neither expanded the capacity of farming centres nor allocated resources to trawler maintenance.

In addition, the sector has had to confront thinning consumption overseas stemming from the global credit squeeze, Gimenez added.

In 2005, the spread of the Taura Syndrome Virus (TSV) in shrimp farming centres affected harvests and prompted the production of the crustacean to stagnate, barely reaching 23,536 tonnes.

Of the total production of shrimp obtained that year, 74.8 per cent came from the aquaculture sector, 17.9 percent from artisanal fishing and the rest from industrial trawling.

Last year, 68 per cent of shrimp was produced by the aquaculture industry. (Photo: INSOPESCA)

The government launched a series of measures and managed to boost production in 2006, to 32,634 tonnes of shrimp, 64 per cent of which were farmed with just 9.3 per cent coming from industrial trawling.

A year later, however, shrimp production again observed a fall in output, dropping to 30,103 tonnes. Of that total, 6.5 per cent came from industrial trawling, 58.5 per cent from farming and 34.8 per cent from artisanal fishing, Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias reports.

Meanwhile, 23,493 tonnes of shrimp were produced in 2008, from which 68 per cent came from the aquaculture sector and 7.6 per cent from industrial trawling, Gimenez added.

“These percentages demonstrate that the decline in output does not follow the elimination of industrial trawl fishing as they are trying to make it seem – the levels have always been below farming for years. Besides 98 per cent of the activity was directed at exports, [with] very little destined to the national market,” he explained.

The INSOPESCA president recalled that the national government kicked off a recovery plan for farms to boost consumption of the crustacean in the country, at prices accessible for the population.

“We have two plants in Merida and others in Falcon that were reclaimed and our idea is that, together with the shrimp farmers and the Venezuelan Agrarian Corporation (CVA), this food be put in the hands of the Venezuelans and have a nearly 20 per cent impact in production,” he added.

In the meantime, TSV has spread among the farmed shrimp stocks of Zulia state, prompting a steep decline in production of between 12,000 and 15,000 tonnes, confirmed the president of the Zuliana Region Development Corporation (Corpozulia), Carlos Martinez Mendoza.

The loss, representing nearly 50 per cent of national production, affects several producer firms and at least four processing plants, now paralysed, Martinez Mendoza told the Economic Development Commission of the National Assembly, in explaining the productive and biological state of the western shrimp farming sector.

Related article:

- Virus behind large drop in national shrimp output

By Analia Murias
editorial@fis.com
www.fis.com

Print