CAIRO – In a meeting with Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouli Tuesday, Agriculture Minister el-Sayyed el-Quseir reviewed a plan to develop fish wealth in Egyptian lakes.
The plan is mainly about preserving fish inventories through a number of measures that include a complete ban of illegal fishing methods, as well as the fry fishing from lakes connected to the sea.
The meeting also took up a vision to upgrade Egyptian lakes, with Quseir pointing out that Egypt’s map includes nine natural lakes that, together, measure about 1.9 million feddans.
Those constitute one of the major natural fish sources in Egypt, besides the Nile River, the Mediterranean and Red Sea, the minister noted.
In addition to all this, there are also fish farms that extend over an area of 289,000 feddans, Quseir further said.
He put Egypt’s total production of fish at about two million tons annually: 1.6 million tons from fish farms and 400,000 tons from natural fisheries, atop of which lakes.
Egyptian lakes contribute to 12 per cent of the total local fish production, Quseir made it clear.
He also said that Egypt comes first in Africa and sixth worldwide in terms of fish farming.
Quseir also posted Madbouli on a national plan to cultivate sugarcane using the seedling system, noting that this should help overcome problems of traditional cultivation.
The seedling system should help increase the average productivity from 33 tonnes to 55 tons per feddan of sugarcane, the minister said, adding that this would constitute a 50 to 60-per cent rise.
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