Pakistani seafood exports remain in tight spot amid EU ban

As the suspension of Pakistan's seafood exports to the EU is nearing three years, its resumption in the near future seems unlikely as the EU mission is dragging its feet to visit the country.

Exports from Pakistan came to a halt in April 2007 when an inspection mission found serious flaws in the supply chain and processing of fisheries products exported to Pakistan and ranked them below the commodity standards requirements of the EU.

Pakistan had to suffer initially when its fisheries sector was de-listed to export to the EU countries, however, it managed to recover and explored a couple of new markets to make up the losses caused by the EU ban.

Moazzam Khan, director general of the Marine Fisheries Department (MFD) said that Pakistan was put in the annual inspection list of EU and whenever they come they would come as a special arrangement for Pakistan. He claimed to have completed the required work for EU in the seafood supply chain system.

On the other hand, seafood-processing industry is not at all satisfied with the efforts of MFD to act and move the ban on exports to EU.

According to Khan, during the first eight months of current fiscal, Pakistan seafood exports fell over 9%, which exporters pointed out was due to short landing of seafood. However, the situation now is quite different and higher arrival of the product has compensated the losses in the previous months and the export has also started recovering.

''The full year export figures of seafood product are hopefully much better than the previous years and could even much higher if the ban on export to the EU is lifted in within one month'', they opined.