Disease and falling market prices have pushed hundreds of shrimp farmers in south-central Ninh Thuan Province to the verge of bankruptcy. Their woes have been compounded by the high costs of material inputs.

More than 1,200 hectares which had been used to raise tiger prawns around the Thi Nai Lagoon in Ninh Hai District are being left alone as another shrimp season approaches.

“I lost dozens of millions of dong last season,” said Nguyen Ngoc Hung of Ho Hai Commune in Ninh Hai District. “I invested in an area of 5,000 square meters last year. It was a bumper harvest, but the selling price dropped to as low as VND55,000 (US$3.14) per kilogram.”

Hung said he has switched to raising fish this season.

Farmer Canh of Khanh Hai Town in Ninh Hai District said he had no money to turn the shrimp area back to the salt-field it used to be, after he lost everything in recent years.

Eight years ago, he invested VND300 million ($17,137) to turn the two-hectare salt field into a shrimp farm, and had reaped profits of up to a billion dong in the first few years. However, low prices and disease in recent years have now bankrupted him.

“The tiger prawn has swallowed my land and house,” he said. “Earlier, the salt farm had produced less profit, of some dozens of millions of dong a year, but it was safe.”

He said input material prices had increased up to four times in the last season, while the selling price of shrimp’ dropped to half the previous season at VND50,000 ($2.86) to VND60,000 ($3.43) per kilogram.

Nguyen Thanh Tung, chairman of Ho Hai Commune’s People’s Committee, said many families still owed banks money although they had sold out their land and houses.

He said around 350 families in the commune were shrimp farmers and they owed banks a total of around VND30 billion ($1.7 million).

Tung also said thousands of farmers had moved to urban areas to find other jobs.

TRA FISH PRICES RISE, BUT SLUMP CONTINUES

The price of tra fish in the Mekong Delta has increased to VND16,000 a kilo from VND14,000 (US$0.80) a kilo two weeks ago, but supply is running out as many famers have stopped raising it, a company director said Saturday.

In some provinces like Dong Thap and An Giang, the harvest of tra fish has halved, said Duong Ngoc Minh, general director of Hung Vuong

Joint-stock Company at the My Tho Industrial Zone in Tien Giang Province.

Minh said the European market is recovering but the shortage of fish was not likely to be overcome until this September. He also predicted 30% of workers in the fish processing sector will be laid off this year. (TN)