January 2, 2006

 

Pakistani seafood company fails to meet EU standards

 

 

The federal government of Pakistan has banned a seafood company from sending consignment to the EU after it failed to meet the standards set by the EU for exporters.

 

A senior official said the EU this week allowed three Pakistani seafood processing and exporting companies to send consignments to its member countries, but complaints about one of the already-approved firms forced the local authorities to ban that.

 

"The EU had initially banned nine seafood processing and exporting companies," said an official at the federal ministry of food, agriculture and livestock.

 

"The fresh ban this week on one firm made it 10. However, during the same week it approved Spectrum, National Seafood and Venus International, which left the total number of processing factories at eight."

 

He said the federally-administered Marine Fisheries Development was responsible for maintaining quality standards set by the EU and was mandated to ban the firms, which were not meeting those standards.

 

Seafood exports to the EU remained suspended for six months from February to August 2005 due to a self-imposed ban by the federal government on quality grounds.

 

The decision, the government claimed, was taken to avoid major damage as it believed that the EU had raised serious concerns about the quality of Pakistani seafood and had asked the authorities to remove the complaints.

 

"The February decision was taken to avoid a major damage as the government believed that the concerns raised by the EU team during its visit should have been removed first," said the official.

 

He said the EU concerns rang alarm bells in government quarters as Pakistan lost the European market for several months on the same grounds in 1998, which caused more than US$100 million losses.

 

A three-member team from the EU's Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) visited Karachi in February to check seafood quality and inspected fisheries' facilities and installations at the Karachi and Korangi fish harbours.

 

The team wrapped up their week-long visit with warnings that Pakistani authorities should maintain seafood quality as per the set standards; otherwise they would lose their largest single seafood export market.

 

Exporters say seafood exports to the EU states suffered more than US$20 million losses during the past six months following the federal government's ban, and major importers of Pakistani seafood had switched over to India and Bangladesh.

 

"The exporters lost more than US$20 million during the six-month self-imposed ban," said Vice-chairman of the Pakistan Seafood Industry Association Faisal Iftikhar.

 

"During that period exporters attempted to explore new markets for Pakistani seafood and some of them really got good response from East Asian and Gulf countries."

 

He said damages due export suspension to the European countries hurt the overall scope during 2004-05, as the region was a single largest buyer of the Pakistani products.

 

The EU countries, which shared 54 percent of Pakistan US$128 million seafood export in 2003-04, have imposed 100 percent checks on import of frozen fish products from Pakistan, following detection of a contaminated consignment of shrimps at Rotterdam in March 2002.

 

The Sindh government completed a Rs 15 million project at Karachi Fish Harbour following directives of the federal authorities to establish an exclusive zone for seafood to be exported to European countries. The Rs 15 million provincial government's project was completed in two months.