By ADAM IHUCHA,
The Eurozone crisis and its ripple effects have put Lake Victoria’s multimillion-dollar Nile Perch fishing industry under renewed pressure, after a lull of four years.
The Eurozone crisis and its ripple effects have put Lake Victoria’s multimillion-dollar Nile Perch fishing industry under renewed pressure, after a lull of four years.
Nile Perch, a major foreign exchange earner in the three
riparian countries — Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania — had started to recover from
the 2008 global financial crunch, which almost brought the $1.3 billion
industry to its knees.
Expectations were high that fishermen would make increased
earnings this year, particularly after the fish stock in Lake Victoria soared
by 123 per cent, potentially pushing up revenues from $650 million to $1.3
billion.
The latest hydro acoustic survey done in October 2011 to
determine fish stock biomass show fish stocks had increased to 1,944,089
tonnes, up from 1,583,367 tonnes recorded in August the same year.
But these hopes have turned into nightmares, as the ripples
from the Eurozone crisis reach Lake Victoria’s shores, outliers of an economic
storm about to hit thousands of Nile Perch fishermen.
Fishermen in Tanzania’s Lake Victoria zone — comprising the
Mwanza, Mara and Kagera regions — are already counting their losses. The local
price of Nile Perch has plunged.
The vice chairman of the Fisheries Union Organisation,
Benjamin Mashimba, says that local processors have slashed the price of Nile
Perch from Tsh5, 000 ($3.164) to Tsh 2,700 ($1.7) per kg, prompting fishermen
to boycott supplying fish indefinitely.
Mr Mashimba said that the Nile Perch price cut was
unilaterally effected by fish processors from June 12, 2012.
According to Mr Mashimba, the majority of fishermen feel
that the local processors are taking advantage of Eurozone crisis to exploit
them.
“The fish processors are deceiving us; common sense doesn’t
agree that the price of fillets can drop by 50 per cent overnight,” said Mr
Mashimba, adding that members of his organisation are not going to supply fish
until they raise the price and compensate those who have incurred losses during
the boycott period.
However, an official of the Tanzania Industrial Fishing and
Processors Association, Alfred Charoman, says that demand for Nile Perch
fillets in European countries had dropped sharply due to the euro crisis.
Mr Charoman said the price of a kilogramme of Nile Perch
fillet in Europe had dropped from $5 to $3, but a Tanzanian PhD candidate
studying in Germany told this reporter that the price of a kilogramme of Nile
Perch there is $11.57.
“End consumers in Europe buy a kilo of Nile Perch fillet at
between $13 and $15,” the student said on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, poultry and pork are as cheap as $3.8 a kilo,
leading many families to switch as economic hardship bites.
Leading Market
Europe is the leading market for Nile Perch fillets from
Lake Victoria, accounting for 80 per cent of the total catch of one million
tonnes, according to statistics from the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organisation
(LVFO).
Spain, Portugal, Greece and Germany consume the lion’s share
of Nile Perch from the world’s second largest freshwater lake. “These are hard
times for Nile Perch processors and exporters because most of our cold-rooms
are bursting. Imagine, I have 200 tonnes of Nile Perch fillets lying in
cold-rooms. There’s no fillet market at all in Europe,” Mr Charoman said via
telephone.
Currently, an estimated 600 tonnes of processed Nile Perch
fillets destined for Europe, worth $6.942 million, are sitting in cold storage
rooms, mainly in Mwanza, Musoma and Bukoba.
Fisheries Union Organisation chairman Juvenary Matagili said
that an estimated 290,000 breadwinners for nearly 2 million people in the Lake
zone, have so far lost their jobs.
The lion’s share of the jobs that have disappeared were held
by men who worked as fishermen, pushing thousands of women to become primary
breadwinners.
This has also adversely affected other economic activities
in Mwanza and neighbouring regions, because the fish catch is a major cash
machine whose multiplier effects touch every trade in the Lake zone and beyond.
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