India challenges for rohu export market

Sources: Myanmar Times

U Han Tun, the vice chairman of the Myanmar Fisheries Federation, said India is now seriously challenging Myanmar’s position in the Bangladesh market.
“Exporters have told us that exports of Indian freshwater fish are creating lots of challenges for our products,” he said.

Myanmar exports about 10,000 tonnes a year of chilled freshwater fish, mostly the rohu (Nga-Myit-Chin) species, to Bangladesh through border trade. But in the recent months, India has increased production and exported larger quantities to Bangladesh; enough to challenge Myanmar’s position, exporters said.

“Before these rohu from India began arriving in Bangladesh we always had a strong position. But now that we’re competing directly with these Indian fish and exporters they have a few advantages over us,” U Han Tun said.

He explained that the Indian rohu tend to look better, are fresher and are cheaper.

“The flesh of their fish is whiter than ours and their fish are generally fresher because their products have shorter distances to travel to reach the market,” one exporter said.

He added that Indian fish only need about 48 hours to hit Bangladesh’s markets, while Myanmar’s fish take up to eight days.

“We’ve been told that their [Indian producers] fish farms are situated in West Bengal State, which borders Bangladesh, so they don’t have to send the fish very far at all. Our fish, however, have a long way to go and are shipped over,” U Han Tun said.

“Myanmar used to be the leading producer of rohu in the international market but in recent years a number of other countries have begun producing this fish,” said U Myo Aung, the joint secretary of the Myanmar Fishery Products Processors and Exporters Association said.

He said that Thailand, India and Vietnam have all begun farming rohu and jostling for export markets.

“This is a sign for us that we need to improve. If Indian producers can further increase the amount of fish they are farming and begin exporting to other markets – especially those in the Middle East – then we are going to have a tough time,” U Myo Aung said.

Myanmar also exports freshwater fish to the Middle East and association figures show that about 200 tonnes of farmed fish are exported every month.

However, the Fish Farmers Association has begun investigating ways to improve the situation. The association’s chairman, U Than Lwin, said a partial swap to alternative species was on the cards for the future, while raising the quality of the farmed Rohu was also planned.

“We have been producing the rohu for many years but we are not doing much to raise the quality of these because we’re not doing much in the way of research and development,” he said.

He said workshops and research should be organised to improve the size and quality of the fish produced in Myanmar.

“Producers in other countries are continually upgrading and adding to the quality of the gene pool where they’re drawing their fish from, while we keep using the same gene pool every year. It means they are producing better fish than us,” he said.

U Than Lwin said that another strategy under consideration was swapping to alternative species that are just as marketable as rohu but cost less to produce.

He said rohu must be farmed for about 20 months to reach market size, which makes them an expensive fish to grow.