This year the Government of Armenia will promote the export of fish from Armenia according to a statement by Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan. Fish farmers, however, are skeptical of the claim.
Sargsyan has not specified how the program will be implemented, however, since last year the idea of exporting Armenian trout and surgeon not only to Russia and Georgia but also to European countries and the United States has been speculated.
“After the economic crisis, when fish export to Russia was suspended, its recovery last year, as well as founding a fish shop in Kaliningrad to sell fish only from Armenia, was a great achievement for us,” Vahagn Martirosyan, head of the Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Agriculture of Armenia, told ArmeniaNow. (About 20-40 percent of the fish export annually was through the Kaliningrad agreement.)
Director of the Union of Fish-Breeders Artur Atoyan says that annually 250 companies produce 3,000-3,500 tons of fish, mainly trout and surgeon, about 320 tons of which were exported last year.
“This year the process was suspended, and no favorable conditions are created for fish producers to consume their product even in the domestic market; and it is not excluded that next year the number of fish producers will fall by 85 percent,” Atoyan told ArmeniaNow.
He says that fish producers are now required to install water meters and there is additional expense for renting property – costs which will drive farmers out of business.
During the Soviet period, Armenia produced 8,000 tons of carp and 400 tons of trout (annually), but after the Soviet Union collapse that production stopped, and it has been activated only recently.
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