HIBAPRESS – Rabat
Zakiya Darwish, the Secretary of State for Maritime Fisheries, confirmed the adoption of a comprehensive approach aimed at ensuring citizens benefit from the diverse fish resources of the Kingdom, by enhancing the abundance of marine products in the national market and ensuring the sustainability of fisheries and achieving a balance between economic valuation and the preservation of resources for the benefit of current and future generations.
The Secretary of State for Maritime Fisheries at the Ministry of Agriculture, Maritime Fisheries, Rural Development, Water and Forests, explained in her response to the members of the Al-Haraki team in the House of Counselors, that Morocco has significant fish wealth that contributes significantly to the gross national product, where marine discharges reach about 1.4 million tons, with small pelagic fish forming more than 80 percent of them, in addition to other varieties including mollusks and white fish. Darwish highlighted that the fisheries sector has an industrial fabric that includes 531 units for the valuation of fishing products, and contributes significantly to supplying the domestic market with various marine products, especially canned sardines, considering that these indicators reflect the size of the efforts made to ensure a stable and sustainable abundance of marine products. The government official stressed that this dynamic requires a tight and strict management of marine fisheries, confirming in this context the adoption of a roadmap extending from 2025 to 2027, as an extension of the Halieutis strategy, and aims to enhance the achievements made, especially in the field of marketing of fishing products and activating local markets. She added that the government aims to increase the rate of national consumption of marine products to reach 19 kilograms per person per year, by ensuring a regular supply to the domestic market, and encouraging the diversification of fish supply, especially through imports within the framework of free trade agreements that allow the exemption of imports from customs duties. Darwish stated that the volume of imports directed to domestic consumption in 2023 reached about 68 thousand tons, compared to only 11 thousand tons in 2010, in parallel with the development of a logistical infrastructure for storage and refrigeration, where eighty storage units are currently available covering the entire national territory. In the same context, the Secretary of State pointed to the organization of the profession of wholesale fish seller, which was not structured in the past, highlighting that the number of professionals holding the professional card exceeded ten thousand sellers, in addition to working on developing organized networks for the distribution of frozen and converted fishing products. The government official concluded by emphasizing the continuation of expanding the network of sales markets, through partnerships with local authorities, which resulted in the completion of 12 wholesale markets and 8 modern retail markets, within the framework of improving citizens' access to marine products in various regions of the Kingdom.
