K10m marked to help locals

 THE National Fisheries Authority (NFA) has committed K10 million towards assisting locals to venture into small businesses in the fisheries sector, an official says. 

Deputy managing director Philip Polon said the money has been held in local banks for the locals to access. 

“NFA is putting about K10 million into Nationwide Bank, Micro Bank and National Development Bank, so they can provide financial assistance.

“For everything about fish, say fish farming, ice, for marketing – for anyone who wish to go into fishing,” Polon told The National yesterday during investment seminar on freshwater prawn Aquaculture.

The seminar covered areas which included: 

• Description of freshwater prawn farm design and construction, and the prawn farming process;
• Marketing opportunities for freshwater prawns in Port Moresby
• Projections of likely capital/operating costs and returns from a freshwater prawn aquaculture business in PNG
• A visit to the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) demonstration freshwater prawn hatchery at Waigani campus
• A Question and Answer session with prawn farming experts.

The seminar delivered results from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) project FIS/2011/049, “Evaluation of the potential for commercial aquaculture of the freshwater prawn Macrobrachium in Papua New Guinea”, which was a research collaboration between prawn farming experts in Secretariat of the Pacific Community’s (SPC) Aquaculture Section, NFA’s freshwater aquaculture staff, and academics and students of the School of Natural and Physical Sciences at UPNG’s Waigani campus. 

The project was jointly funded by ACIAR, NFA, and European Union’s Increasing Agricultural Commodity Trade (EU-IACT) project, as a new production area for economic development.

Those who attended included interested participants who considered investment in freshwater prawn aquaculture in PNG, and those in the future needed to assess investment proposals in the sector.