Fisheries sector still poorest, says BFAR

CEBU, Philippines - Poverty incidence in the fisheries sector remains high despite the increasing production of marine products, according to an officer of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.

Supervising Aquaculturist of the BFAR central office Melannie Guerra said the fisheries sector in the Philippines has the highest poverty incidence among the basic sectors like farmers (38.3%), migrant and formal sector (16.6%), senior citizens (16.2%) and individuals residing in urban areas (13%), among others.

She said poverty incidence of fishermen was at 39.2 percent in 2012 from 41.3 percent in 2009.

In Central Visayas, poverty incidence of fisheries sector was at 28 percent with 20,000 metric tons of fisheries production.

To help fishermen in their livelihood, Guerra said BFAR implemented a program called Target, which stands for Targeted Actions to Reduce poverty and Generate Economic Transformation.

With the program, she said they are targeting to reduce poverty by four percent this year through provision of appropriate livelihoods and promotion of ecologically sound, economically viable and socially equitable interventions.

She said the program runs in phases, such as Fishing Community and Resource Profiling, Social Preparation, Establishment of Livelihoods, Improving Productivity, and Enhancing Product Value.

The phase 1 is assessing the present situation through the use of socio-economic form; and the second phase is the conduct of cluster trainings for FLDTs and NAPC COCs on Community Organizing and Community Development, Project Management and Entrepreneurship.

Phase 3 involves channeling of existing livelihood development and support programs to targeted fisherfolk beneficiaries (e.g. National Payao Program and BangkangPinoy among others); phase 4 is Establishment of 252 Community Fish Landing Sites to identified priority sites; and phase five is Provision of post-harvest tools and equipment to reduce post-harvest losses and conduct of skills development training for value-adding, marketing, etc.

Further, Guerra said fisheries production relatively decreased in 2012 at 4,865, 000 metric tons, lower by 2.1 percent or 2,140,000 metric tons in 2009.   She said the decrease in fisheries production was attributed to illegal, unreported and unauthorized fishing.

Also, the decrease was due to the depletion of coral, mangrove and swampland covers.

She said country’s coral cover in 2004 is at one percent, lower than four percent in 1997 and five percent in 1981.

Mangrove cover, on the other hand, decreased to 117,000 hectares in 1995 from 138,000 hectares in 1993 and 175,000 in 1980.

Similar situation occurred in swampland cover at 246,063 hectares in 2011 from 338,393 in 1988 and 375,000 hectares in 1977.

To address the depleting resources, she said BFAR introduced conservation, rehabilitation and restoration programs.

BFAR has planted 62.75 million of mangroves in 20,920,000 hectares of land. Other efforts include banning the harvest of Sargassum and seagrass and black corals, and hulbot-hulbot fishing or Danish Seine.  (FREEMAN)