Tuna Sector Research Body To Ensure Sustainability Industryff

From Business World

An exporters’ group bared on Wednesday plans to organize a research body that will help ensure sustainability of the tuna sector.

Ronnie P. Masicampo, executive director of the Philippine Exporters Confederation, Inc.-Region 12, said the proposed body will collate industry data for studies.

”It’s hard to get data, especially confidential ones, from the tuna companies because they are wary where these will be used,” Mr. Masicampo said in a phone interview.

Mr. Masicampo said this thrust is important in order to scientifically analyze the factors that affect the industry, this city’s key economic driver and major export performer of Central Mindanao. Six of the country’s seven tuna factories are based here.

He recalled instances when tuna executives would just say that “production was down by 10%, with reasons given hard to validate because companies tend to shield themselves from...scrutiny.”

”The research group would want to find the deeper factors,” Mr. Masicampo said. “In this way, we also give credible data [to the public] from the industry as a whole that will not be suspected once it goes out to the public.”

Concerns have been raised over the reliability of tuna industry data, in the face of dwindling stocks in the Pacific Ocean.

Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources assistant director Benjamin F.S. Tabios Jr. earlier said that the bureau’s tuna data gathering is in compliance with the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission’s requirement for its member countries to submit annual reports on their tuna catch. The commission has said that the Philippines and Indonesia account for at least 25% of tuna harvest in the western and central areas of the Pacific Ocean.