Shaikh Mohammad Bokhtiar
SAARC Agriculture Centre, Bangladesh
Title: Reliability and policy framing for fisheries statistics in saarc region
Biography
Biography: Shaikh Mohammad Bokhtiar
Abstract
World fisheries production have remarkably increased since 1950 and with present annual 167.2 million tonnes fish production (FAO, 2016), fisheries and aquaculture became the potential contributors to food and nutrition security and livelihoods at global level. Almost 90% of aquaculture production takes place in Asia, most of it in the tropical and subtropical countries. The two South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries, India and Bangladesh with the annual production of over 10.0 and 3.55 million tonnes in 2016, respectively rank the 2nd and 5th largest fish producers in the world. The sector employs 56.6 million people globally of which India and Bangladesh alone share 32 million people. In South Asian region, at present hardly one third of the existing freshwater ponds and water bodies are engaged in aquaculture. Most of the rural people in the region depend on their backyard ponds and seasonal ponds for their house hold fish requirement throughout the year. These fisheries catches contribute substantially to the national fish production data. However, these production data are never included in the respective nation’s fish statistics data base. Therefore, there is underestimation of fish production data for any particular country in SAARC region. At present, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) maintains global fisheries statistics by collecting data from the member countries. Past experience shows FAO sometimes encountered with incorrect data. Therefore, fisheries data may be scrutinized by the various regional bodies before sending them to world data pool. In this regards, SAARC can play the leading role for regional data pulling and scrutinisation. Also, review of existing methodologies for fish production estimation from diverse water bodies need serious attention. Based on the outcome, necessary policy may be framed at SAARC regional level for fisheries data collection and accurate reporting. Without reliable statistics, effective fisheries management and policy-making are impossible in the region, the major contributor to global fisheries production