The Sunday News
Thandeka Matebesi, Farming Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Fish Producers’ Association (ZFPA) is lobbying the Government to impose an import levy on fish coming into the country in an effort to protect the local industry from unfair competition.
ZFPA resident economist Mr Reneth Mano said the cheap imports were threatening the sustainability and viability of local fish farmers.
“We are looking at mechanisms that can be used for taxing or imposing a levy on the jack and horse mackerel which is imported from Namibia. At the moment most of the jack and horse mackerel is coming in duty free without being taxed whatsoever. It’s very cheap and it’s also crowding out the impetus of the development of the domestic fish industry,” he said.
Namibia is the top African fishing country by production value and exports and its estimated national fish reserves are the biggest in Southern Africa.
The industry employs about 8 000 workers, of which about 40 percent are seagoing personnel and 60 percent are involved in onshore processing.
The industry involves catching, processing and marketing of fish and fish products. About 85 percent of the fish landed is processed in Namibia and then exported.
Mr Mano said the revenue that would be generated from the import duty could be turned into a revolving fund for developing the country’s fish industry.
“So I think, it’s better to get some levies from it and then we can invest that into the development of aquaculture fish farming.
“If we can impose maybe a small levy of at least five cents per kilogramme and then we can generate a fund that will be ploughed back in to an investment finance system,” he said.
Mr Mano said the association already has a concept paper to present to the Government this year, which the Ministry of Land, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce seem to be keen on.
He said the country’s fish industry was faced with a myriad of challenges chief among them being failure by financial institutions to offer fish farmers loans, a situation which has proven to be detrimental to the growth of the industry.
“The first challenge we are faced with is the shortage of foreign currency, which is a cause for price hikes as we try to meet the costs which are incurred in this sector. The second challenge has to do with the limited access, particularly for expansion of small to medium sized fish farming sector, is the absence of medium long-term financing subsidies for the whole sector. Presently, there is no bank offering any form of credit facility to farmers for capital, equipment and for the genetics as well,” Mr Mano said.
He said despite the challenges there has been significant growth in the sector owing to a number of intervention by private players.
“Some private players have also taken up fish farming and some dams are now being utilised for fish farming…So the numbers have gone up particularly over these past two years,” he said.
Generally, the number of fish farmers has been going up, for many years the sector was dominated by one or two companies involved in the harvesting and supplying of fish to the market.
However, over the years there has been a significant growth in the number of farmers throughout the country partly due to a fish farming initiative, which was funded by the European Union.
