Although the farming area in 2010 was less than last year, thanks to high productivity of average 261.2 MT per ha per season, harvested fish reached 1.141 million MT, up 4.6 percent over 2009 and reaching 95.1 percent of the year plan. Largest farming locality was Dong Thap with 1,872 ha and the least was Kien Giang with 30 ha. Compared with previous years, raw material in 2010 was no surplus. With the incentives for processing and aquatic-feed production enterprises to farm pangasius, the farming area of some localities increased compared to last year such Ben Tre, Can Tho and Tien Giang.
The area of pangasius farming decreased because in the early months of 2010, raw pangasius was higher than 2009 and rich supply; however, farmers still had no profits or lost due to high input cost, especially feed price. The farming area in QI and QII decreased over the same period of 2009 that led to the shortage of raw material in the last months (in the last 6 months, pangasius production was approximately 400.000 MT) and resulted in the price of raw material was higher.
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