The House of Representatives Committee on Aquaculture and Fisheries Resources urged the Department of Agriculture (DA) to put equal focus on developing modern post-harvest facilities in the country’s eastern seaboard to boost fish production and help offset the dwindling catch in the West Philippine Sea (WPS).
The committee, chaired by Rep. Brian Raymund Yamsuan of Bicol Saro party-list group, joined House Minority Leader and 4PS Party-list Rep. Marcelino Libanan in calling on the DA, through the Philippine Fisheries Development Authority (PFDA), to construct more fish ports and cold storage facilities in Samar, Leyte and other Visayas provinces in the country’s eastern seaboard.
During the hearing, Yamsuan also urged the PFDA to advance the timeline of its fishport construction in the municipality of Oras, Eastern Samar to either 2025 or 2026, instead of its original schedule of 2028.
Both Yamsuan and Libanan pointed out that the 2028 schedule for constructing the Oras fishport highlighted the apparent low priority that the PFDA has given to the development of the fishing industry in the eastern seaboard.
Yamsuan said he would talk to DA Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. about the possibility of moving up the scheduled construction of the Oras fishport as well as the other infrastructure development programs in the eastern seaboard.
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) has reported that for the first half of 2024, fish catch in the WPS went down by 6.78 percent to 101,039.54 metric tons (MT) from 108,392.48 MT for the same period in 2023.