Indonesia expects fishery outputs up to 26 mln tons in 2016

Indonesian fishery and maritime ministry set a target to rise fish production by 2 million tons to 26 million tons next year as some policies are expected to take effect on hike of production, a minister said here on Tuesday.

Among the polices were the rules to stop illegal fishing by sinking ships illegally fishing in the country's waters and a ban on local sailors to sale their products to foreign ships at sea.

"The value of exports in fishery was also expected to scale up to 6.82 billion U.S. dollars next year from this year target of 5. 86 billion U.S. dollars," Indonesian Fishery and Maritime Minister Susi Pudjiastuti told lawmakers at the parliament building.

The volume of fish derivative product was also estimated to rise to 5.9 million tons in 2016 from this year's expectation of 5. 6 million tons, she said.

"The ban of transshipment has been in line with international regulations. This week (I) will watch the finalization of monitoring devices settlement. If this problem is not solved, the products of our sailors' fishing will be bought by ships waiting at deep sea and sold to overseas," said Susi.

Indonesia's fishery export was down to 245,085 tons at the first quarter compared with the same period last year of 263,624 tons, data from the ministry said.

Export value scaled down to 969 million U.S. dollars at the three months through March from 1.068 billion U.S. dollars at the same period last year, it said.

Both of the declines were in part due to lower price, according to the ministry.

However, in addition to the policies above, the ministry forecast the outputs to increase in April to June as the seasonal condition. Endi