The European Union (EU) has cleared 11 processing plants in Pakistan for export of seafood to its member countries. The new updated list of plants, released recently by EU and coming in force w.e.f. April 14 2005, is a follow-up of EU''s mission to Pakistan over two months back to inspect the working of seafood related department and sanitation conditions at Karachi Fish Harbour and processing plants. Prior to release of new list, the total number of plants, eligible to export seafood export to EU were 20.
The approved plants in the new list include Seagreen Enterprises (Pvt) Ltd, A.G. Fisheries (Pvt) Ltd, Kanpa International, Peoples Fisheries (Pvt) Ltd, Pakistan Import Export International Company, Super Star Enterprises, Coastal Seafoods, Sea Miles International, Seabird Fisheries, Akhlaque Enterprises and Modern Fisheries.
According to seafood industry sources, the new list has been sent to all European ports to clear only those seafood shipments from Pakistan, processed by new approved plants.
The real cause of cut-down of number of processing plants from 20 to 11 is poor sanitation conditions at the de-listed plants, which do not meet the commodity standards requirement of EU.
Apart from expressing dissatisfaction over few plants, the mission was not satisfied with conditions at Karachi Fish Harbour and had desired improvement in the conditions to meet commodity standards of EU.
The government had imposed the ban on seafood exports to EU unless the improvement of conditions and had decided to develop exclusive corridor for seafood export to EU.
However, the plan does not seem to be accomplished in the near future, as pace of undertaking the development work is very slow despite the sanction of required funds by the Sindh government.
Vice-Chairman Pakistan Seafood Industries Association (PSIA) Faisal Iftikhar said, when contacted, at delisting of some nine processing plants would not hurt the seafood export to the EU as most of them are not operational or having exports on very small scale.
But it is, he said, self-imposed ban by the government on seafood export to EU, which is hurting this industry due to non-development of the EU''s corridor at harbour so far.
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