As part of its efforts to increase the national income, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Water Resources is working to establish various aquaculture projects across the sultanate with an investment of around RO1bn.
According to the Contractual Production in Agricultural & Fisheries Sectors Symposium, which was organised by the Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industry recently, 18 aquaculture projects were approved in 2020.
“Of the 18 projects, seven have got approved commercial licences and 11 are under preliminary commercial licence phase with a total investment cost of RO987mn and an expected production of 435,397 tonnes,” an official source in OCCI said.
He added, “Shrimp cultivation is the most common among the projects, with four approved commercial projects and four under preliminary commercial licence phase. There are two approved commercial and four preliminary commercial projects for the closed systems projects – abalone, sea cucumber, barmandi and salmon. The ministry has also granted a preliminary commercial licence for marine algae farming, with an investment estimated at RO13mn for the production of 17,500 tonnes per year.”
The ministry said that the sultanate’s production from aquaculture in 2019 accounted for 1,054 tonnes of fish and fish products, an increase of 133 per cent compared to 2018, worth a total value of RO2mn.
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