ca tra ca basa 25jul2

vneconomy

Catfish business, takes off after Mekong breeders net a tidy profit

(VNS)- Catfish breeding has become popular in many Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta provinces after people realised it could be very lucrative.

An Giang Province has the most number of people engaged in it, followed by Can Tho, Dong Thap and Vinh Long; An Giang has about 3,400 fish rafts, most of them for breeding tra and basa varieties.

These are expected to provide 48,000 tonnes offish to processing factories for export. Can Tho Province has been striving hard to increase output - to 50,000-80,000 tonnes. It now supplies 20,000 tonnes to factories.

Breeding catfish has fetched a large number of farmers in the area fortunes. It is therefore no surprise the locals are sceptical about the court case in the US alleging price dumping by Vietnamese farmers.

As Nguyen VAn Tho, an owner of one of largest cages on the Chau Doc River asks, "why bother to raise catfish if the venture does not bring profits?"

"And why would the exporter sell his products at less than cost price, while he can seek other markets?"

Viet Nam began its catfish exports to the US in 1997, in the form of frozen fillet. Since then its tra and basa have found a niche, considered by Americans as no less than their local counterparts. Besides, they are much cheaper.

Last year, the US imported about 6,000 tonnes from Viet Nam.

Rearing catfish in Viet Nam is much cheaper than in the US.

In An Giang Province's Chau Doc township, for instance, an owner of four fish rafts, Dang Thanh Nhan, pays his hired workers only US$25 (VND400,000) per month, while his American counterpart has to shell out $10 a day to each worker.

The proportion of fish un-harvested in, the US is an enormous 70 per cent because catfish have natural predators like birds. In the

US, hunting birds is prohibited. Somebody like Nhan, on the other hand, loses 10 per cent of his stock at most.

In Viet Nam, catfish are often bred in rivers, which are replenished in the flood season. Thus productivity is very high unlike in the US, where they are bred in lakes.

Vuong Hoc Vinh, director of An Giang Aquaculture Research and Production, says his institute has been providing catfish breeding know-how to the An Giang farmers for six years. This has meant an abundant supply of high quality fish.

Feed accounts for the greatest portion of breeding cost. The two major components of feed are corn flour and soya powder, available in plenty and cheaply in the province.

Besides, most of the aqua-processing factories in the province have modernised, tremendously improving efficiency.

All these factors have contributed to the price of catfish consistently going down rather than up. It is estimated that production cost has fallen by 40 per cent at these plants since the time they began exports