Manila government unprepared for tuna ban
UPI Asia | February 02, 2010
Manila government unprepared for tuna ban
By Gerry Albert Corpuz
Manila, Philippines — The Philippine government is unprepared to address a looming job crisis in its domestic tuna fishing industry as 150,000 workers and small tuna fishermen are set to lose their jobs with the two-year ban on tuna fishing to be implemented beginning this year.
According to the fisherfolk alliance Pamalakaya, the administration has failed to come up with a contingency plan to address the loss of jobs among tuna fishermen in Far South Mindanao with the two-year tuna fishing ban executed by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission.
Pamalakaya national chair Fernando Hicap asserted that 150,000 tuna fishermen will lose their jobs in the fishing and canning industries, and around 750,000 people indirectly dependent on the country’s backward tuna fishing industry will also feel the economic disaster of this two-year tuna ban.
Big players in the tuna industry, including corporations that can tuna, said the closure of the high seas for tuna fishing will render idle some 200 fishing boats for the next two years, causing a predicted 20-percent drop in the supply of tuna in the local and world markets. The tuna industry in General Santos is currently valued at US$380 million based on annual export figures of 400 metric tons per year.
The Pamalakaya fisherfolk alliance agreed with the observation raised by Martin Tan, president of Socsksargen Fishing Federation and Allied Industries, that the tuna ban, covering areas parallel to Palau, above Papua New Guinea and below Micronesia, was not meant to preserve tuna stocks in West and Central Pacific, but to dislodge fishing companies from Third World countries from their tuna fishing grounds and allow the tuna fleets of the European Union and Japan to take over these tuna-rich fishing areas.
The group noted that in their respective free trade agreements with the Philippines, Japan wants to invade the Philippine waters for tuna fishing under the controversial Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement, while the European Union also wants a share of the country’s territorial waters for tuna under a proposed Philippine-EU free trade pact.
The group said that the free trade agreement with Japan would oblige the Philippine government to allow Japanese tuna ships to explore the country’s tuna resources in exchange for taxes derived from the value of tuna harvested in the country’s territorial waters.
Pamalakaya projected that the local tuna industry concentrated in the port city of General Santos stands to lose 18 billion pesos in profits yearly once the Japanese fleets start their tuna exploration this year.
On the other hand, Japanese investors are expected to gain at least 43 billion pesos in annual profits in tuna trading, the group said.
"The devastating impact of JPEPA to the local tuna industry includes the loss of 100,000 jobs provided by the local tuna fishing companies in South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani, General Santos City and the Davao regions," it said.
According to Pamalakaya, a single 3,000-gross ton Japanese factory ship is capable of harvesting 50,000 metric tons of tuna a year, or 150 metric tons of tuna per day. Based on industry standards, a single factory ship could earn as much as US$32.5 million in gross profits from the sale of skipjack tuna.
Pamalakaya said the bulk of the profit will come from the remaining 35 percent of the 50,000 metric ton tuna catch, which is US$210 million. "A single medium-size factory ship thus will earn $242.5 million a year, and since Japan at the very least employs four factory ships in its regular tuna fishing expedition per country, we expect them to earn a total of $970 million per year," the group said.
At present the local tuna industry yearly produces 400,000 metric tons of tuna, with 15 percent of the production going to the domestic market and 85 percent for export.
The European Union accounts for 40 percent of the country’s fresh and canned tuna exports or roughly 64,000 metric tons per year. The rest of the exports are shipped to tuna markets in Japan and the United States. But EU industrial tuna fleets are also banned across Europe and other major tuna fishing areas, and there were reports that the European tuna exploring ships are also urging the Philippine government to allow its tuna fleets to fish in Philippine waters under the proposed free trade agreement.
Advocacy groups said the government should indefinitely suspend if not abrogate the treaty with Japan if it wants the local tuna fishing industry to survive. They said the free trade pact with the European Union should also be put on hold following the tuna crisis in Manila.
They subscribe to the idea that the most logical and objective solution to the current predicament of tuna fish workers in the southern Philippines is to abrogate the Japanese deal and pursue the nationalization of the tuna fishing industry by investing financial capital and technology for the domestic development of the tuna sector. This would arrest the rising tide of job losses among tuna fish workers and tuna fishermen.
(Gerry Albert Corpuz is a correspondent of Bulatlat.com, an alternative Philippine online news site. He is also currently head of the information department of Pamalakaya, a national federation of small fisherfolk organizations in the Philippines. His website is www.pampil.wordpress.com, and he can be contacted at themanager98@yahoo.com.)
