The history of fishing in Bengal is more than 4,500 years old (Breazley 1993). For generations, people have harvested fish from ponds, rivers, flooded land, the coast and the deep sea, learning to cooperatively use fishing grounds and market their catch. Fish harvesting and marketing were traditionally considered undignified jobs, so fishers were mainly the low-caste Hindu tribes such as the Majhi, Jaley and Malo. Ponds and lakes continue to feature prominently in the landscape and the lives of rural people. Ponds were traditionally created as borrow pits excavated to supply soil for raising homesteads above flood levels during the wet monsoon. The ponds serve multiple purposes for the rural household, used not only for fish culture but also to supply water for washing, bathing and other household needs. Fish culture in such closed water bodies as ponds and lakes was recorded to have started in 350 BC on the Indian subcontinent (Banglapedia 2008a). In the past, fish farming was extensive and subsistence in nature, stocked with wild fry and fingerlings caught in rivers and cultured without the use of fish feeds. Following the introduction of technology for inducing carp to spawn in the late 1960s and the subsequent development of fishpond management technologies in the 1970s and 1980s, fish farming became widespread and market driven. Culturing various carp and exotic fish species in ponds and lakes became popular all over the country, with the broad participation of all religious and ethnic groups.
Today, about three quarters of Bangladeshis live in rural areas and remain largely dependent on agriculture and natural resources for food and livelihoods. However, some structural changes have occurred in the economy of Bangladesh over the past 3 decades (Hossain and Bose 2000), reducing the prominence of the agriculture sector in favour of the industrial and service sectors, as has been experienced in other developing countries in Asia. The Bangladesh economy has been growing at a respectable rate; average long-term gross domestic product (GDP) growth was 5.7% per year from fiscal year (FY) 1973 to FY2005 (BBS 1993 and2007a, MoF 1990 to 2007 various issues). Although the agricultural GDP has moret han doubled in absolute terms, its share of the national GDP declined dramatically from 54.6% during FY1973-75 to 19.7% during FY2003-05. This reflected the increasing prominence of the industrial and service sectors, which together contributed 45.4% of the GDP during FY1973-75 and 80.2% during FY2003-05. Despite the decline in the share of agriculture in the national GDP, the fisheries sector (including both capture fisheries and aquaculture) has maintained an average contribution of 4-6% to the national GDP (BBS 2007a). Within agriculture, the contribution of fisheries has increased significantly from 7% during FY1973-75 to 15% during FY1993-95 and to 22% during FY2003-05 (Table 2). The fisheries sector experienced 8.9% growth per annum during the decade of 1985 to 1995, the highest growth rate in agriculture, then slowed to 3.7% per annum in the following decade. Several studies have suggested that Bangladesh needs to achieve sustained GDP growth of at least 8-10%, export growth of 20-25% and import reduction of 18-20% to be economically developed before 2025 (Bhattacharya 2002, PC 1995). It appears that the fisheries sector can play a vital role in achieving higher growth in the national economy and exports. Recently, garments and fish have become Bangladesh’s two most important exports.
Source: Country Case Study: Development and Status of Freshwater Aquaculture in Bangladesh. Dey et al. 2008. WFC.
Source: Country Case Study: Development and Status of Freshwater Aquaculture in Bangladesh. Dey et al. 2008. WFC.
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