LUMUT: The aqua-culture industry will be further enhanced in an effort to increase fish supply in the country in view of the limited supply of marine fish, Agriculture and Agro-based Minister Datuk Seri Noh Omar said.
He said the country’s demand for fish would continue to increase with the rise in population.
“The country’s fish requirement is not less than 1.5 million tonne a year, and will increase to two million tonne by 2010.
“Besides meeting domestic needs, Malaysia is also capable of becoming one of the world’s main producer of fish,” he said at the opening of a seminar on aqua-culture investment here today.
The text of the speech was read by Fisheries director-general Datuk Ahamad Sabki Mahmood.
Noh said among the initiatives taken by the government was the zoning of land and the country’s territorial waters for aqua-culture industry.
In Perak, nine areas, covering 19,000 hectares, had been zoned as Aqua-Culture Industrial Zone, making the state the country’s biggest producer of aqua-culture, he added.
He said that based on the 2009 statistics, the aqua-culture industry produced about 478,245 metric tonne of fish, worth RM2.4 billion. — Bernama