Nearly 300,000 people affected by fish deaths in Central Vietnam

In addition to destroying the marine environment, the mass death of seafood in four central provinces has had a major impact on exports and tourism, according to a government report.

In bold in the report sent to the 14th National Assembly, the damage caused by the recent mass fish deaths in 4 central provinces has just been updated by the Government with many detailed figures.

Once known as one of the country's seafood "barnacles", since the mass fish deaths caused by waste discharge from Formosa Ha Tinh Company Limited in April 2016, fishing and exploitation activities of fishermen in the four provinces of Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien Hue have encountered many difficulties.

Many fishermen in these four provinces have even had to stop fishing in coastal waters, resulting in a sharp decline in seafood output. In the first six months of the year, fishing output increased by only 3.2% (in the same period last year, it increased by 4.4%). In particular, marine fishing output is estimated to increase by only 3.4%, 1.2% lower than the growth rate in the same period in 2015.

Mass fish deaths in four central provinces have affected seafood exploitation, fishing, export and tourism activities.Photo: Duc Hung

“In addition to destroying the marine environment and affecting production and the lives of fishermen, the mass fish deaths in four central provinces have had a negative impact on exports and tourism...”, the Government report emphasized.

Preliminary calculations show that the environmental pollution incident has directly affected more than 100,000 people due to unstable jobs, low income and more than 176,000 dependents.

In particular, dead fish also damaged the output of seafood exploited in coastal and offshore areas, estimated at about 1,600 tons per month. The area of ​​shrimp farming completely dead was 5.7 hectares, equivalent to 9 million shrimp seeds and about 7 tons of commercial shrimp about to be harvested.

Over 3,000 hectares of intensive and semi-intensive shrimp farming were affected by high salinity, over 350 hectares of shrimp farming died sporadically; 1,613 fish cages died (about 30,000m3), equivalent to 140 tons of fish. In addition, 6.7 hectares of clam farming area died, equivalent to 67 tons; and over 10 hectares of crab farming died due to environmental incidents.

Also due to this incident, the selling price of seafood products decreased by an average of 10-20% compared to the same period in 2015, along with a serious decline in product consumption in the markets of the 4 affected provinces. The selling price of offshore seafood (beyond 20 nautical miles) decreased by 50%, while seafood caught near shore could not be consumed.

Currently, Ha Tinh has over 3,000 tons of seafood products in stock (accounting for 85% of the province's cold storage capacity), while Quang Binh has over 2,000 tons in stock.

Pointing out the visible and statistically significant damage caused by the fish deaths in the Central region, the Government acknowledged that the incident had caused serious consequences not only to production and the lives of people in the region, but also destroyed the marine ecological environment, which would take a long time to recover.

“This is a serious issue to learn from experience in selecting investors, assessing environmental protection conditions when granting investment licenses, and strengthening environmental pollution monitoring and inspection, especially for facilities with high potential for pollution,” the Government concluded.

In addition to the updated figures on the fish deaths in the four central provinces, the Government's report to the National Assembly also clearly analyzed the reasons for the decline in GDP growth rate in the first 6 months of 2016, when it only reached 5.52%, lower than the same period last year at 6.32% and lower than the annual target of 6.7%.

The decline in growth of the agriculture, forestry, fishery sector (down 0.18%) and industry caused GDP growth in the first 6 months of the year to decrease by 0.8% compared to the same period last year.

In terms of prices, agricultural, forestry and fishery production in the first six months of the year decreased by 0.1% over the same period, mainly due to a 0.7% decrease in agriculture, while forestry and fishery increased by 5.8% and 1.3%, respectively.

According to VNE