Fisheries Committee Ministry of Ecology, Geology and Natural Resources Of the Republic of Kazakhstan denied information on a decrease in the production of fish products in 2021

In a number of online news resources (inform.kz , total.kz ) with reference to the article published on December 28, 2021 on the website www.energyprom.kz, unreliable information is actively being disseminated about an alleged 2-fold decrease in fish production in 2021.
The Fisheries Committee of the Ministry of Ecology, Geology and Natural Resources of the Republic of Kazakhstan officially refutes this information as untrue.
Thus, according to the official statistical report published on the website of the National Bureau of Statistics of ASPiR RK, in January-November 2020, 11.6 thousand tons of cooked or otherwise canned fish, caviar and its substitutes were produced in the country. For the same period of the current year, this indicator amounted to 12.3 thousand tons or 13.7% more.
At the same time, according to the methodology of the National Bureau of Statistics for calculating the balance of fish use resources, this indicator does not include enterprises with fewer than 100 people, while in the fishing industry, the main share falls on small and medium-sized businesses that report quarterly, respectively, in the indicator for 2021 posted on the website, the volume of production of enterprises for the 4th quarter of this year is not taken into account.
In addition, the figure of 12.3 thousand tons is not final (for 11 months of 2021), and taking into account the work of processing enterprises in December, the annual figure will increase.
Thus, it is obvious that these data, on the contrary, indicate an increase in the volume of fish production in 2021 compared to 2020.
In the republic for 11 months of 2020, the catch of fish amounted to 45.3 thousand tons, while for the same period of this year 48.6 thousand tons were caught, that is, an increase of 7.3% compared to the previous year.
In general, in the republic, the volume of production of fish, crustaceans and shellfish processed and canned in January-October 2021 amounted to 87.1 thousand tons of fish. Compared to the same period in 2020, production volumes increased by 10% or by 8.8 thousand tons.
The point of growth in the development of the fishing industry is fish farming. Therefore, the Decree of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan dated April 5, 2021 No. 208 approved the Program for the development of fisheries until 2030. The main indicator of the Program is an increase in the volume of farmed fish to 270 thousand tons per year by 2030.

More than a thousand new fish farms will be created for this purpose.
This year, compared to 2020, the number of fish farms has increased by 40%. At the same time, in 2021, the volume of fish grown amounted to 13.1 thousand tons of fish, which is 31% higher than in 2020 (9.0 thousand tons).
In 2021, about 3.2 billion tenge of private investments were attracted for the implementation of 9 investment projects for the production of fish with a total capacity of about 10 thousand tons.
In addition, the implementation of 32 projects with the volume of fish cultivation of 129 thousand tons with completion dates from 2022 to 2025 has been launched this year. It is planned to attract about 182 billion tenge of investments.
This year, a number of legislative initiatives have been adopted, eliminating various administrative barriers, simplifying procedures, expanding the capabilities of market participants and reducing their costs for fish production.
Proceeding from the above, the Committee of Fisheries of the Ministry of Fisheries of the Republic of Kazakhstan earnestly asks media representatives to rely on reliable sources of information in order to prevent the dissemination of distorted information that may lead to the formation of an erroneous opinion in society.

Committee of Fisheries
Ministry of Ecology,
Geology and Natural Resources
of the Republic of Kazakhstan