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An Overview of Fisheries Sector in Bangladesh: Past Trends, Present Status and Future Prospects

Md. Akhtaruzzaman Khan
UMB School of Economics and Business Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB), P.O. Box 5003, 1432, Ås Norway

Abstract/ Executive Summary:

Fishery has emerged as a fast-growing sector and contributes to nutrition, employment generation, livelihoods improvement and export earnings, especially in developing countries. This paper is an attempt to present overview of the fisheries sector in Bangladesh with respect to resource use, production trends and practices, export earnings, market and environment using available secondary data. Both fish production and productivity has increased for culture, capture and marine fisheries sector during the last two and half decades but tremendous development has been achieved in aquaculture. Different government organizations and research institutes have contributed significantly to develop economically viable and environmentally compatible technology and successfully transferred to the farmers. Nevertheless, fish market is far from the satisfactory level in terms of space, sanitation, drainage and management. Many constraints are responsible for limited expansion and under-utilization of fisheries areas including capital, technology, extension service, proper policy, rules and regulations. Several constraints, possible solutions and future prospects for the three sub-sectors (capture, culture and marine) are discussed.

Keywords: Overview, Fisheries, Bangladesh

Location: Chittagong, Cox’s Bazar, Khulna, Satkhira and Bagerhat belt in Bangladesh

Start Date:

End Date:

Program Area: Socio-economic and Policy

Commodity: Fishery policies, Trend analysis

Objectives:

The specific objectives of the National Fisheries Policy are (i) to enhance fisheries production, (ii) to alleviate poverty through creating self-employment and improve the socio-economic condition of the fishers, (iii) to fulfill the demand of animal protein, (iv) to achieve economic growth through foreign export earnings from fish and fisheries product, and finally (v) to maintain ecological balance, conserve biodiversity, ensure public health providing recreational facilities (MoFL 1998).

Methodology:

The inland capture fisheries includs, river & estuaries, Sunderbans, beels, Kaptai lake and floodplain which cover 4.03 million hectares comprising of 86.5% of total inland fisheries area. In practice, about 87% of area for capture fisheries produces 43.2% of total inland fish and rest of 56.8% fish being produced only from 13% culture fish area. In 1985-86, capture fish share was 55.7% of total fish production but declined to 35.5% in 2009-10 (DoF 2009-10). From 1986 to 2001, the annual capture fish production growth rate was 3.5%, nevertheless, fish production from river and estuaries declined by 1.3% (Dey et al. 2008b; Khan et al. 2009 ). Afterward, impressive progress has been achieved in production due to the adoption of a co-management system in the floodplain areas and the production growth rate of capture fisheries grew up to 5.7 percent during 2002 to 2010. Aquaculture can be divided into two as: freshwater and brackish water aquaculture. Freshwater aquaculture satisfies domestic consumption; on the other hand, brackish water earns a considerable amount of foreign exchange. The freshwater aquaculture includes pond aquaculture, rice-fish culture on seasonal farmland, cage culture in rivers and lakes, pen culture in closed and open water bodies, and fish culture in such commonly held perennial water bodies as oxbow lakes. Annual production growth rate of culture fish was 7.2% during 1984-85 to 1994- 95 and it has increased up to 11.8% in 1995-96 to 2009-10 (DoF 2009-10; Khan et al. 2009 ). This higher production growth rate has been achieved due to the innovation, dissemination and adoption of new technologies. Consequently, the share of aquaculture to total fish production increased from 18.2% to 46.2% during 1986 to 2009 period. Bangladesh is blessed with brackish water resources which cover about 21 southern districts of Bangladesh (located in Chittagong, Cox’s Bazar, Khulna, Satkhira and Bagerhat belt) facing the Bay of Bengal. It is very productive as it gets lot of organic nutrients from southern mangrove (Sunderbans & others) forests. On the other hand, this area gets inorganic nutrients from the upstream river. Shrimp culture practice and production period are varies from location to location depending on water salinity level. There are mainly four types of shrimp culture system practiced in Bangladesh (i) Alternate shrimp-rice farming; (ii) Alternate shrimp-salt farming; (iii) Year-round shrimp farming and (iv) Shrimp culture alternate with freshwater aquaculture.

Source of Information: Norwegian University of Life Sciences, NO–1432 Ås, Norway, ISBN 978-82-575-1098-5, ISSN 1503-1667

Article Link (Online Journal):

Funding Source:

Total Budget (Tk.) :

Achievement/Findings:

This paper provides a deep insight of Bangladesh’s fisheries resources, production and yield trend, fish export situation, market structure and highlights the present constraints and future prospects. Bangladesh has a significant contribution in world fish production. During the last two and half decades fisheries sector has become one of the most productive and dynamic sectors in Bangladesh. In the early 70s, this sector was dominated by small-scale capture fisheries. Since then remarkable growth in terms of production and yield has been achieved in aquaculture due to research, innovation and dissemination of new technology. In addition, brackish water shrimp aquaculture has been expanded rapidly and took the position of second-largest export earning sector in Bangladesh. On the other hand, inland capture fish production and yield has increased gradually due to changing floodplain’s leasing policy and management 55 system and Bangladesh became the second largest inland capture fish producing country in the world. A lot more boats and vessels than recognized by the department of fisheries are operating in the Bay of Bengal that created excess capacity in the marine fishery sector. Although remarkable growth and development has been achieved in the fisheries sector, however, further development and sustainable benefit to present and future generations can be ensured through conserving fisheries resources, allocating more budget, restructuring fisheries institutions, encouraging private entrepreneurs, establishing private-public partnership and applying proper policies in all sub-sector of fisheries.

Knowledge Management: Journal