Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development State Minister Dilip Wedaarachchi said that it is acknowledged that marine production can no longer meet the demands by a growing population and that Sri Lanka will be making concentrated efforts to develop aqua culture for commercial purposes.
He was speaking at the SAARC Regional Consultation on Development of Commercial Aquaculture.
“In our part of this South Asian region, malnutrition is eradicated by consumption of fish. But as marine resources are depleting, there is a renewed focus on developing aquaculture and Sri Lanka will institute policy decisions to improve this sector,” the Minister said.
He added that there has been countrywide consultation to further this by the National Aquaculture Development Authority of Sri Lanka (NAQDA). Meanwhile, Secretary to the Ministry K.D.S Ruwanchandra cited that most of the culture systems are small scale and there should be concentrated effort to increase knowledge sharing, technology, seed production and to identify commercial importable species that are of high demand to meet the needs of the sector in a sustainable manner.
“Aquaculture sub-sector faces many issues which includes high cost production, less prominence for quality, issues in the market value chain among others which might be the same for other SAARC countries. Hence resilience methods should be adopted,” he said.
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