Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, July 2 / Trend H.Hasanov /
Turkmenistan's Ak Bugday etrap of Ahal province commissioned a new multi-faceted production complex for breeding and processing fish, the Turkmen State Committee for Fisheries said on Monday.
Design capacity is 50 tons of commercial fish per year. The company provides for a full cycle of fish farming, introduced latest technology of aquaculture, there are processing shops, which will produce fish delicacies, the statement said.
The company is designed to produce salted, spiced and marinated fish products - up to 20 tons per year.
In Turkmenistan pond fish breeding is one of the most important directions of development of the industry. Such valuable fish species, like carp, silver carp and grass carp are successfully cultivated in artificial ponds, already occupying many hundreds of hectares in the country.
The country has recently approved a program of fisheries development to 2030, which plans to increase this production.
Shortly before the adoption of this document, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov has ranked the industry among laggards. In his view, the lack of communication between fish farms and processing enterprises, and their distance from each other interfere with achieving high performance.
Under the program, fisheries expect modernization, modern infrastructure will be created through construction of new and reconstruction of existing enterprises. At this stage, development of aquaculture (breeding and rearing of aquatic organisms - fish, molluscs, crustaceans and algae under controlled conditions to increase the productivity of water bodies) in various regions of the country is one of the main activities of the State Committee for Fisheries.
The leading state-run enterprise is Balkanbalyk which produces fish in the Caspian Sea and is engaged in processing of products of fishing.
Turkmenistan, along with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Iran, is situated on the shores of the Caspian Sea, rich in biological resources.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union a need arose for a new agreement on the legal status of the Sea. The five Caspian littoral states agreed that the Convention can only be taken by consensus. Until then a legal regime established by the Soviet-Iranian treaties continue to act.