We cannot be cowed by fearful climate-change scenarios of the ocean swarming across our green pastures without exploiting oceanic opportunities as level-headedly as possible. In other words, our fishing industry can no longer continue playing second- or third-fiddle in the scheme of industrial growth: it must take the plunge, hook, line, and sinker, to lead us, and the world, into what could become an ocean-based future economy. It is a potential pillar of the country's future prosperity, not only because of past inland-fishing performances, but also for the promise of Bay-based marine fishing.
That is not wishful thinking. Blessed as we are with so many rivers, the Food and Agricultural Organisation's (FAO's) "Fisheries and Agriculture" statistical manuals indicate Bangladesh's almost two million-ton haul made it one of the top global producers, to which one might add the steadily-approaching one million ton of marine-catch, and the world's sixth largest aquaculture production just crossing the million-ton mark. Proportionally, these three sectors represent about 35 per cent, 20 per cent, and 45 per cent, respectively, of the total haul, with marine-fishing ready to explode to feed the global market, and inland-fishing equally energetically geared to boost domestic consumption.
According to Sarwar Md. Saifullah Khaled, fisheries engage 7.0 per cent of the country's population, that is, about nine million, rising to 11 million during the monsoon months: of them, three million register as fish farmers, 1.3 million as inland fishermen, and slightly over one million as shrimp farmers and fry collectors. Together they catch almost 800 native species, 10 species of pearl-bearing bivalves, 12 species of edible tortoise, 15 of crabs, and three of lobsters. Exports alone have been approaching the billion-dollar mark, fetching almost three per cent of total export income and contributing almost five per cent to the country's gross domestic product (GDP), or over 22 per cent of the GDP agricultural contributions.
A prominent feature of this stock-taking has been the advent of the shrimp sector, itself a major component of the fish-export business, and the source of infinite problems. Although developed under a World Bank initiative during the 1980s, FAO initiatives paved the way for building standards, regulations, and inspections for the entire industry, that is, beyond shrimps, from the early 1980s. This was evident in the country's 1983 Fish and Fish Product Ordinance and 1985 laboratory upgrading. These were capped by the 1996 adoption of the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP), and membership of the Common Fund for Commodities, administered by the Inter-governmental Organisation for Marketing Information and Technical Advisory Services for Fishery Products in the Asia-Pacific (INFOFISH).
Little could they help to prevent the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banning Bangladesh's shrimp exports from as early as the late-1970s, to be followed in 1997 by the European Union's clamp-down. Little can we place the blame upon them. Our own inadequate inspection and infrastructure as well as sub-hygienic procedures proved costly, especially since one-half of the exports went to the European Union, one-third to the United States, and the remainder to Japan. FAO support helped revive especially the shrimp sector in the early 21st century as licenses of many of the 65 plants secured EU approval.
Yet, physical damage remains, particularly in the Sunderbans mangrove where shrimp cultivation proved most ideal: salt cultivation destroys vegetation, especially along the coast where ocean-rise fears are the most. Reforms have been underway, prompted by our importing countries. Though James C. Cato and others well-versed in sea-food safety applaud reform efforts underway, they are more circumspect in giving an automatic green signal given the stringent safety and quality demanded by the importing countries. Bangladesh has some critical lessons to learn in this regard as it seeks to climb the middle-income rankings, among them that shedding a less-developed status is not dependent only on quantitative improvements since quality increasingly counts: in other words, how much we produce or export must be augmented by how qualitative the product or export. Nonetheless, Bangladesh's future in this gigantic business must still pay plenty of attention to the quantitative dimension because of production inefficiencies: reforms doubled the costs of shrimp exports during the 1990s; and only the correct lessons learned can produce better results in the 21st century.
The roughly 650,000 tons hauled in 1980 has quintupled by now, proportionately both inland (from 520,000 to 2,532,000 tons) and in marine waters (125,000 to 729,000), though aquaculture (shrimp, for example) expanded faster, by almost 20 times since 1980 (91,000 to 1,726,000 tons), again with proportionate inland (82,500 to 1,575,300 tons) and marine (86,000 to 150,800 tons) increases. In terms of employment, however (a) inland domination until the year 2000 was overtaken by both aquaculture and marine fisheries; and (b) aquaculture growth often speaks for up to two-thirds of all fishermen.
No future promise can be ignored since the country has an area three-quarters the size of its own landmass in the Bay of Bengal. With port construction dotting the coastline from Matarbari in the south-east to Payra in the south-west, Bay fishing is bound to spiral, neighbours like India and Thailand have expressed interest in partnering resource cultivation. And critical action taken by the government to establish sanctuaries, restore habitats, establish beel nurseries, protect hilsa, and enforce fish conservation plans should complement the use of satellite technology and IT services to boost production, manage harvesting, and protect/preserve the resources. Additional resources need to be invested in expanding and modernising the modest marine fleet of slightly more than 200 motorised decked trawlers and 50,000-odd undecked vessels, half of them motorised.
In the final analysis, the future success of the fishing industry must also be measured in another qualitative arena: human health. Since the 1980s, the per capita intake has almost tripled from 7.7 kilograms to over 20 today, meaning that the fish proportion of total animal protein-intake has moved from less than half to more than half, and of total protein to over 10 per cent. Clearly there is more to be done, but the added human vitality has been enormously productive in several non-fishing arenas. That is the national spin-off that any quantitative growth of the fishing industry from its second- or third-fiddle economic ranking will mean.
   At the time of the 1997 EU ban, fishing (with shrimps) registered as our fourth largest export item. Before then, we were exporting under 24,000 MT annually, increasingly of value-added items (frozen, peeled, de-veined, or cut shrimp; but also processed items). Though the reforms were costly, at the end of them all, exports surpassed that figure to at least 35,000 MT at the start of the new century, only to double that figure within a decade. This is where our hope lies: expanding the reformed industry to chip into the developed-country transformation we have prioritised.
Fishing will not be the lone star in the journey. As the next article of the series points out, a stronger candidate may be the leather industry.
Dr Imtiaz A Hussain is Professor, International Relations, formerly Universidad Iberoamericana,
Mexico City.
inv198@hotmail.com
Wishing a fishing future: An ocean-based future economy
a 10-part series by Imtiaz A. Hussain examines one sector in one article on each Tuesday and Friday of our independence month, beginning March 01 and ending on April 01 with an overall appraisal. The fourth article of the series follows | Published: March 11, 2016 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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