Middle East Focus Thinking BIG
Major investment suggests the Middle East is set to spawn a billion dollar business F
ishing has long been an important industry in the Middle East, but the combination of depleted stocks and growing consumer demand have encouraged the region to
look increasingly to aquaculture to improve food security. According to the Food and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO), fish production in the area has been gradually increasing since 1961 at a growth rate of 16 per cent. Egypt is the biggest producer in both capture fisheries and aquaculture, supplying 40 per cent of the total volume. In second place is Iran (21 per cent), followed by Turkey (19 per cent), Yemen (6 per cent), and Oman (5 per cent). Some 44 per cent of seafood produced in the Middle East already comes from aquaculture, and recent data shows it is the fastest growing food processing sector in the Gulf states, with farmed fish output across the region up five- fold in a decade, from 194,000 tonnes in 2002 to 1.1 million tonnes in 2012. In recent years, there have been exciting de-
velopments in the oil rich nations, from Oman and Saudi Arabia, to Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain.
www.fishfarmer-magazine.com
The Fishing and Aquaculture exhibition in Dubai this month (March 16 to 18) has attracted record numbers, and has grown 64 per cent in the past three years. And there has been a positive response to the
first Middle East Aquaculture Forum, to be held in Dubai from April 5 to 6. ‘Towards Sustaina- ble Aquaculture in the Middle East’ will be the theme of the event, which will focus on vital industry issues affecting the key Middle Eastern aquaculture producing countries. Plenary speaker Ahmad Al Ballaa, managing
director of National Aquaculture Group and chairman of the Saudi Aquaculture Society, said: ‘Aquaculture has a pivotal role to play in global food future. Conservative estimates indicate that output from aquaculture must at least double to meet the demand for aquatic protein by 2050.
‘With a current population of more than 400 million, the Middle East region has an increas- ingly important role to play in this future, in both the demand and the supply side. In order to meet that future opportunity, we must how- ever develop aquaculture responsibly.’ Ambitious projects in the area – the Mid-
dle East’s first salmon farm; a sturgeon farm producing Siberian caviar – point to a com- mitment to do things bigger and better than other international players, but drawing on the expertise of the world’s veterans, particularly the Scandinavians. Fish consumption in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a political and economic alliance of six countries – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman – was estimated at 10kg per person per year, according to a report in Qatar’s BQ online
de “In recent years, there have been exciting
velopments in the oil rich nations, from Oman and Saudi Arabia, to Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain
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