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Pakissan.com;
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Ban on seafood exports
By Tanveer Ahmed
KARACHI (April 07 2007): The European Commission (EC) has sought an action plan from the government of Pakistan following identification of grave deficiencies in the production chain of seafood exported to European Union countries.
According to well-placed sources, the EC has sought the action plan through a detailed report on the state of the country’s seafood. The EC has sent it request to the government in the detailed report.
“The competent authority should provide the EC with an action plan, including a timetable for its (action plan) completion, within one month,” sources quoting the contents of the report, told the Daily Times on Friday.
The country’s seafood export are passing through a turbulent time now because of delisting of seafood processing plants by the EC following a visit of its mission in January this year for inspection.
The sources said now the Marine Fisheries Department (MFD) is engaged in finalizing this action plan so that it can be submitted to the EC in the stipulated time. “Suggestions from stakeholders of the industry have been sought so that these can be incorporated in the action plan,” the sources added.
The sources pointed out that the action plan would in fact be guarantees, which would be submitted to the EC with a specific timeframe for their implementation so that seafood export to the EU could be resumed.
“We have asked the processors and provincial government authorities to give their inputs for this action plan, so that it can be forwarded to the EC as early as possible”, an official of the MFD confirmed.
The sources however said that guarantees would be of no use, if conditions continue to remain the same as we have seen earlier when an EC mission visited the country in January 2005 and found deficiencies in the production chain, which had led to a self-imposed ban by the government to avoid any possible ban by the EC.
Written guarantees given by the MFD in the previous action plan in 2005, the sources said, were only partially implemented because stakeholders worked poorly to achieve the conditions as was envisaged in that action plan.
Sardar Hanif Khan, chairman of the Seafood Industries Association (PSIA), when contacted, said the EC mission’s visit and developments that followed are not as serious as the government has taken it because if one goes through the EC report, there is no mention of delisting of processing plants in it.
In fact, the EC did not want to delist the processing plants, but it is our government that had asked the EC to take this step because if the government had taken it itself, the whole of the industry would have been at odds with it,” he opined.
The EU is a big market for Pakistani seafood products together with Middle East and Far East countries. The country exported $196 million worth of seafood in the last fiscal year and the EU share in this export stood at over $40 million.
Exporters fear that if the ban persisted in the remaining month of this fiscal, the country could lose $25-30 million worth of seafood exports.
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