Fisheries sector

Madagascar, as an island, possesses a large fishing zone and various "deposits" seawater and freshwater, with 5,000 kilometres of coastline, 2 miles of continental marine plateau, 2,000 km2 of lakes, rivers and several aquaculture centres.

The Government of Madagascar is very keen on developing the fishing sector because of its economic (source of foreign currency), social role (employment creation), and a development factor (through the increase revenues to local communities and balanced nutrition of the population).

The fishing sector can be divided into three fields:

1- "Inland fishing", consists of freshwater (streams and lakes) fishing which is mainly traditional,
2- "Coastal fishing", consists of seawater fishing, which is divided into three fishing categories based on the technique used: Industrial fishing, on a Large scale, by specialized Businesses with professional material; Fishing as family businesses and fishermen's associations with small motored boats not exceeding 50 horsepower. The most common fishing technique used is the trawl,
Traditional fishing (by foot or by paddling boat).
3- "Aquaculture", which is further divided into two types of cultures depending on the environment, seawater and freshwater: The marine aquaculture today the main culture is the shrimp. The branch also includes the culture of sea cucumber and sealgae.

The freshwater fish farming

Production

Items	1997	1998	1999	2000
Inland fishing	30 000	30 000	30 000	30 000
Coastal fishing	85 841	84 904	87 970	87 435
Aquaculture	5 127	4 503	5 087	7 241
Total Production	120 968	119 407	123 057	124 676

Source: Ministry of Fishing and Seafood resources

Fishing production

1996	2002
118 877	142 193 t

Sector opportunities and potentialities:

The fishing sector presents many potential and opportunities according to the following points:

- Many waters still not enough exploited
- Possibility to triple the aquaculture production in the next 10 years
- Large water ways in the country, favourable to the culture of other species like trout
- The production of tuna still needs to be improved (10 000 Tons per year only)
- The emergence of the culture of marine algas