Binh Thuan has a coastline stretching 192 kilometres, many islands, bays, lagoons and sea currents where a variety of maritime creatures are living. With more than 4,600 fishing boats, local fishermen annually catch 130,000 tonnes of seafood. Particularly, they net 20,000 tonnes of famously processed cuttle-fish a year for local and international markets.
The Phan Thiet fish sauce trademark has long been well-reputed for its premium quality and unparalleled taste. Each year, the province produces more than 20 million litres of fish sauce per annum for the domestic market. The tidal field covering over 52,000 hectares is suitable for culturing sugpo shrimps, crabs, fishes and blood scallops. Remarkably, Binh Thuan exploits 75 per cent of blood scallops in Vietnam which are exported under the brand name of Queen Scallop. Coastal districts have strongly developed aquaculture and fisheries by attracting various sources of investment.
In spite of meeting with many difficulties in seafood export and capital source, Binh Thuan province-based seafood exporters still make good earnings. With the efforts of local fishers and enterprises, in 2008, Binh Thuan earned more than US$78 million from seafood export, a rise of 2.5 per cent year on year. In 2009, more difficulties are forecast to encounter all industries. To weather the challenges, the fisheries sector has to seek out different measures, in which cooperation strengthening is seen as the most effective. The province expects that cooperation in seafood aquaculture, exploitation and processing ensures more sustainable development. The fisheries sector will take fishing ports as the centre to popularise cooperation models like cooperative, workgroup and company in all activities.
The Binh Thuan Seafood Exporters Association and the Phan Thiet Fish Sauce Association will perform better roles in coordinating and associating business operations in the province. They will regulate production, provide market information, seek market expansion information, train human resources and encourage the formation of large scale business units in the fields of logistic service provision, processing, culturing and breeding.
The province will reinforce operations of seafood culturing associations, develop freshwater aquaculture expansion, establish provincial aquatic breeding association and encourage local companies to join business associations for the purpose of producing higher-quality products to meet domestic and export market demand. Besides, the province also adopts good aquaculture practice (GAP) and best aquaculture practice (BAP) to improve the quality of aquatic products, especially in the aspect of high concerns like originality and barcode use. Binh Thuan will also finely process seafood instead of preliminary processing as before. It will enhance supervision in quality, food hygiene and safety, processing and consumption. It will further encourage local enterprises to adopt quality management systems. By 2010, the province will relocate its aquatic processing units to other localities, especially out of Phan Thiet city. Local processors are expected to treat 60 per cent of raw aquatic materials.
Thanh Thao
Vietnamese
