SABAK BERNAM: The Federal Government will spend RM342 million under the Ninth Malaysia Plan to develop 49 aquaculture industrial zones nationwide, Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed said yesterday.

Eleven of these zones had been developed on 6,695 hectares nationwide and two zones were in Selangor, he said, adding that one of the two was a cockle-breeding project along the coast from Kuala Selangor to Sabak Bernam and the other a tiger prawn breeding project in Sungai Nipah here.

The government initially allocated RM195 million for the aquaculture zones but added another RM147 million following the recent introduction of the food security policy, Mustapa said.

He was speaking after officiating the harvesting of tiger prawns at the Sungai Nipah project here.

He said he was satisfied with the performance of the seven tiger prawn entrepreneurs in Sungai Nipah who had shown commitment, and another three entrepreneurs would be brought into the project.
He said the government had spent RM2.5 million to provide the infrastructure for the project, which covered 28 hectares and had 23 ponds measuring 0.5 hectares each.

The Sungai Nipah project was launched with the release of prawn fry into five ponds in January, and the Fisheries Department expects each pond to produce two tonnes of tiger prawns.

Mustapa said the aquaculture zones would help the project participants to boost their income and increase food supply in the country as well as for export purposes.

The ministry has targeted a harvest of 662,000 tonnes of aquaculture products valued at RM6.9 billion in 2010, four times the current production, he added.

On another matter, Mustapa said the Federal Government was working on plans to meet the European Union health and hygiene standards for seafood products following a ban imposed on such products by the union.

He said that his ministry would meet Finance Ministry officials on the matter because measures to be taken to address the problem would incur high costs and additional expenditure.

"We will discuss with the Treasury as it entails finance and soft loans. We need additional allocation to build laboratories to find new ways to comply with the standards."