Experts urge gov’t to set up new Ministry for marine resources
Experts urge gov’t to set up new Ministry for marine resources
Fishery agencies, aquaculture associations and farmers all believe that Vietnam need to establish a ministry to be in charge of exploiting and developing marine resources.
Three quarters of Vietnamese territory is water, but Vietnam does not have an agency in charge of sea economy management.
There are more than 10 ministries and agencies that take care of issues related to sea management.
As Vietnam has vowed to gather strength in the immediate future to develop a sea-borne economy, experts believe that it needs to establish a ministry in charge of sea-economy development.
Dr. Nguyen Huu Dung, deputy chair of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), said at a recent workshop on Vietnam’s seafood industry that Vietnam had acted too slowly in implementing the strategy on sea-borne economic development by 2020.
The strategy of the Communist Party Central Committee’s Conference, released in February 2007, said that the sea economy would make up 53-55 percent of Vietnam’s GDP by 2020 and 55-60 percent of Vietnam’s total export revenue.
Meanwhile, as Dung noted, no important item in the strategy had been implemented over the last seven years.
Dung has once again urged the government to focus on developing the sea-borne economy, emphasizing that the matter has become more urgent, as the East Sea is the “center of the geopolitical disputes” of many regional countries, including China, which is considered the biggest danger for Vietnam.
China’s latest acts of deploying an oil rig in Vietnamese territorial waters, carrying out provocative activities with the navy forces and hindering Vietnamese executive activities all show their wicked intention of monopolizing the East Sea.
Fishery is the industry which has the biggest labor force that is regularly present on sea. With nearly five million professional fishermen, millions of indirect workers and hundreds of thousands of boats, the industry produces 6 million tons of seafood a year for domestic consumption and export, which brings the export turnover of $6.7 billion.
Such a big industry which creates millions of jobs and earns multi-billions in dollars has been managed by the Fisheries General Directorate, a department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD).
Tran Cao Muu, secretary general of the Vietnam Fisheries Association, also thinks that Vietnam needs to change its maritime resources management method in the new century – the time for coastal countries to reach out to the sea.
He has also urged the government to change the viewpoint that fishery is just an agricultural sector which brings modest benefits. Instead, fisheries should be developed into an important industry which brings large benefits to the nation.
“Only when Vietnam has a ministry specially in charge of sea-borne economic development will the industry be able to receive necessary investments to develop,” Muu concluded.
Also according to Muu, fishermen have anticipated that fishing output will fall sharply this year due to China’s illegal acts in the Truong Sa and Hoang Sa archipelagos.
In Vietnam, it is now the main fishing season, which provides two-thirds of the total output for the year.
vietnamnet
