Kenya will not impose a blanket ban on fish imports from China, even as officials move to protect local fishermen from cheaper foreign supplies.
Kenya Fisheries Service director general Susan Imande said the government has opted for tighter import controls instead of a full prohibition. Under the new rules, imported fish will arrive partly processed and frozen, a move she said is meant to give local fish a quality advantage in the market.
“The fish will have the inner parts removed and will arrive in the country frozen, meaning that they will have lower quality compared to the local fish,” Imande said.
She spoke during World Fisheries Day celebrations at Kamere landing beach in Naivasha.
Fisheries principal secretary Micheni Ntiba said the long-term answer was to raise domestic output through aquaculture. He said Kenya had received Sh14 billion from the International Fund for Agricultural Development to expand the area under aquaculture from 4,628 acres to 4,942 acres through new ponds in 15 counties.
Ntiba said aquaculture production was expected to rise to 84,551 metric tonnes by 2022, while annual national fish output stood at about 150,000 metric tonnes valued at roughly Sh21 billion.
He also warned that water hyacinth remained a serious threat to Lake Naivasha and said the county and fishermen needed to work together to deal with it. “This weed could end up killing this lake, which supports hundreds of families. There is need for manure harvesting and continued restocking,” he said.
Nakuru governor Lee Kinyanjui said the county had set aside Sh22 million to establish more fish farms. He added that the county planned to build a fish market and storage facilities along the Nairobi-Nakuru highway to help hawkers who depend on the trade.
Kinyanjui said the lake was also facing poaching and a rise in illegal fishermen, and called for a police unit to be permanently assigned to the water body.
Agriculture executive Immaculate Maina said the county was planning to restock the lake with 150,000 fingerlings. She said officials were also considering an annual three-month fishing ban to allow the fingerlings to mature.
The push to defend the local market comes after President Uhuru Kenyatta said last month that Chinese fish was hurting Kenyan traders. “I have been told about the imported fish from China. It is not possible that we import Chinese fish when our local traders are here,” he said.
Uhuru said the Finance Bill 2018 being signed into law did not mean imports should replace what was already available locally.
Fishermen at Lake Naivasha had raised similar concerns in June 2018, saying foreign fish had flooded the market and urging government intervention.
In 2016, former Kisumu governor Jack Ranguma called for a 100 per cent ban on fish imports from China, arguing that the trade had already damaged the local fish market.
