Tunisia’s fishery and aquaculture production rose by 25% to 8,522 tons in January 2020, against 6799 tons in the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Water Resources.
Fishery production stood at about 7195 tons in January 2020, against 5,297 tons in the same period of the 2019, i.e. a 36% increase.
This evolution has concerned most of the fishing activities, especially coastal fishing (60%), according to the same source.
At the same time, aquaculture production reached 1327 tons in 2020 against 1502 tons in 2019.
As for the sector’s exports, they posted a decline. In this respect, Tunisia exported nearly 1,829.2 tons worth 33.5 MD in January 2020, against 2,345 tons valued at 36.5 MD in the same period of the past year.
This decline is explained by lower exports of aquaculture products (sea bream), which went down from 568.8 tons in 2019 to nearly 167.5 tons in 2020, in addition to the drop in shellfish exports, especially cuttlefish and squid by 1.33% in terms of volume and 3.39% in terms of value, compared to the results of the year 2019.
On the other hand, the exports of canned anchovies grew 2.6 MD, compared to the previous year, in parallel with the exports of fresh tuna which quadrupled from 14.5 tons in 2019 to 65.8 tons in 2020, in terms of volume and from 0.7 MD to 3.7 MD in terms of value.
On the other hand, fishing imports amounted to nearly 3927.8 tons with a value of 14.3 MD, against 2,897 tons amounting to 13.4 MD, during the same period of the year 2019, where they rose by 35.6% in volume and 6.7% in value.
The trade balance of fishery products achieved a surplus of 19.2 MD in January 2020, against 23.1 MD in 2019.
