Impact of Pangus Fish Farming in Mymensingh District, Bangladesh

Abstract

Fish is an important source of animal protein, foreign exchange earnings and employment generation in Bangladesh. But fish production was declining rapidly before 1990s. Therefore government of Bangladesh imported fast growing exotic fishes and Pangus is one of popular exotic catfish which imported from Thailand since 1990s. Vhaluka and Trishal sub-district were selected purposively for this study because those two sub-districts were popular for Pangas fish farming. Fifty data were collected for the study of which 25 from Vhaluka sub-district and 25 from Trishal sub-district and thirty data were collected for rice farming. Data were collected during May to June 2005. In this study Pangus farming was compared with rice farming. So, this study revealed that average average gross profit of Pangus farming was thirty times higher than that of rice farming. It’s means gross profit ratio of Pangus fish farming is quite high compared to that of rice farming. The high profitability of Pangus farming shown here was the impact for the introduction of Pangus fish into this area. All farmers agreed that Pangas farming was profitable business and it contributed poverty alleviation, socio-economic and infrastructure development in the region though they had some problems such as lack of institutional credit, lack of scientific culture method, insufficient training etc and they also believed that they could produce more fish by improving pond management, using more inputs and better seed and acquiring further knowledge of fish farming by participating training program and discuss with other farmers and fisheries specialist.