Indonesia needs more fishing boats: Minister
Indonesia needs more fishing boats: Minister
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia needs at least 3,000 additional fishing vessels to optimize the country's fishery activities, Minister of Agriculture Sjarifudin Baharsjah said.
Antara quoted Sjarifudin who was on a visit to Palu, Central Sulawesi, as saying that additional fishing fleets were also needed to improve the welfare of Indonesia's fishermen who currently have among the lowest incomes in the country.
Sjarifudin said that without the additional vessels, Indonesia's marine fishery resources could be hauled out of the country by foreign fishing fleets without generating domestic revenues.
Foreign fishing fleets, he said as reported on Saturday, have lately been entering Indonesia's territorial waters, including its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
The Association of Indonesian Fishing Companies (Gappindo) earlier this year asked the government to consider allowing the importation of used fishing vessels to boost the country's fishery catch.
Gappindo members said they could not afford to buy vessels manufactured by local companies, whose prices were six to seven times higher than imports.
The government currently bans the importation of used fishing vessels to protect the domestic fishing vessel manufacturer, the state-owned PT IKI.
According to statistics, Indonesia has a potential fishery catch of 6.7 million tons a year, but only 40 percent of the resources in the territorial waters and 25 percent of that in the EEZ has been utilized so far.
Sjarifudin said last week that fishing companies should be able to select the types of vessels they need.
"If they need ships measuring 30 to 40 gross tons, they should make orders to local ship docks," he said.
Local manufacturers, he said, could now produce wood and steel vessels of up to 40 gross tons.
Sjarifudin said that by using local products, fishing companies would be helping the domestic industry because a number of small-scale companies were currently producing small, wooden fishing boats.
By operating more locally-made vessels, especially those owned by small-scale fishermen, foreign fleets will consequently have less leeway to operate, Sjarifudin added. (pwn)