Maritime economy

Ike Señeres

I WROTE about the “Coastal Economy” before, but I will now slightly change my position because I now believe that the term “Maritime Economy” is a broader in meaning than the term “Coastal Economy”. True enough, “Coastal Economy” sounds encompassing because it could go beyond the municipal waters and the easement inland, but “Marine Economy” is really wider in scope because it includes everything within our archipelagic territory, and of course all the islands within, and not just the coastal areas. By comparison, we have a bigger water area than a land area, and what that means is that our mindset should shift towards “thinking water” from “thinking land”.

I also wrote about the “Science Economy” before, arguing that our economy should be driven by Science and Technology (S&T), and that we should be producing more patents and copyrights, arguing that we could create more value added if we could have more Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). I will not stop with my science advocacy, but I will not modify it slightly now to say that we should use S&T to build and strengthen our “Maritime Economy”. How I wish that I could just generally say that everything is actually S&T, but that has to be clearly explained now, because nowadays, many people are now saying that that everything is Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

Not too many years ago, it was generally understood that ICT is merely a subset of S&T, taking off from the argument that all technologies are by-products of the sciences. As it turned out however, ICT took on a life of its own, to the point that there is now a Department of Information and Communications Technology (Dict) that is other than, and separate from the Department of Science and Technology (Dost). Because of that move, the former Department of Transportation and Communications (Dost) has now been renamed as the Department of Transportation (DOTR), obviously so that it would not be confused with the Department of Tourism (DOT).

For whatever it is worth, some quarters are now advocating the creation of a Department of Aquaculture that is apart from the Department of Agriculture (DA), despite the fact that there is already a Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) that is under the DA. It seems that we have the penchant for creating new departments out of newly perceived functions, but is that really the right thing to do? If you ask me, I would say that the first thing to do is to come out with a law that we are and we should be a “Maritime Economy” and all of our policies, plans, programs and projects should be in accordance with that law. As I see it, that law should be enforced by the entire government, and not just by one Department.

As we know it, our marine resources could produce not only food, but also raw materials that could in turn produce other products, such as oils and minerals. More often than not, we would argue that we could produce more food because we have more arable land than some other countries. Of course that is true, but on the other hand, we should argue with the stronger argument that we could produce more food because we have more water areas than some other countries, with longer coastlines as a matter of fact. In connection with that, we should not miss the point that where there is a coastline, there would be a community that could have productivity.

I recall that only a few years ago, the government had plans for an integrated aquaculture facility that would have included fishponds, fishing boats, ice plants, cold storage, processing plants and fish ports. Unlike the farmers who have been complaining about the lack of farm to market roads, irrigation systems and post harvest facilities, we do not hear about fishermen who complain about the lack of ice plants, cold storage, processing plants and fish ports. Perhaps they should really do that, because these components are the ones that could make the industry grow. Considering the fact that the supply of fish has dwindled in the municipal waters, the government should now finance the acquisition of deep sea fishing boats.

If only there are ice plants, cold storage and processing plants in the fish ports, it would encourage cooperatives or entrepreneurs to invest in fishponds and fishing boats in order to supply the processing plants. As a matter of fact, even the processing plant itself can be a secondary cooperative, if and when it is owned by two or more cooperatives. While on this subject, I would say that credit cooperatives could be formed that would lend money to their members for the acquisition of fishing boats and fuel supplies. All told, I would say that what is needed is better coordination, so that all the concerned government agencies would be able to serve the needs of all the cooperatives, perhaps in a one stop shop.

E-mail: iseneres@yahoo.com