Pakistan’s seafood exports have been severely affected by China suspension of import licenses due to reported COVID-19 detections on Pakistani seafood.
Nine out of Pakistan's top 15 seafood exporters have been temporarily barred from exporting to China after COVID-19 was found on the outer packaging of their cargoes, Pakistan’s Qadri Noori Enterprise CEO Manzar Alam told Pakistani publication Dawn.
Alam said the bans from Chinese authorities have put Pakistan’s seafood exports into a “crisis,” as China buys around 60 percent of Pakistan’s seafood export volumes. About 50 Pakistani seafood companies export products to China.
Dozens of international companies have had their permission to export to China suspended for one-week periods following notification that Chinese Customs had detected COVID-19 in their seafood shipments. The ban is extended to eight weeks if the virus is found on four shipments, Alam said.
Rejected cargoes have been sent back to Pakistan and their owners have had to pay demurrage, detention, and taxes worth PKR 2 million (USD 12,200, EUR 10,270) per container. A container of 26 metric tons (MT) of seafood products is priced at between PKR 7 million and PKR 10 million (USD 42,700 and USD 61,000; EUR 35,960 and EUR 51,370).
Alam said the exporters have approached Pakistan Commerce Adviser Abdul Razak Dawood for help, but no breakthrough in addressing the issue had yet been made.
Apart from China, Pakistan also exports its seafood products to Thailand, Malaysia, the Middle East, Sri Lanka, Japan, and the European Union.
Pakistan exported 184,396 MT of seafood in fiscal year 2021, up 7.4 percent year-on-year. Its seafood export value in the last fiscal year also surged 2 percent to USD 414 million (EUR 348.2 million).
The average unit-price of Pakistan’s exported seafood from 2018 to 2021 was USD 2.50 (EUR 2.10) per kilogram, much lower than the average unit price of between USD 5.00 and USD 8.00 (EUR 4.20 and EUR 6.70) per kilogram earned by exporters from other countries in the region, according to the newspaper.
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