National Programme for the Development of Maritime Fisheries in Haiti
- Counts the sector in households and craft rather than in tonnage alone: about 52,000 fishing families across more than 420 localities, operating 26,000 fishing units comprising 14,800 dugout canoes, 10,000 sailing boats and 1,200 motorized boats.
- Records gear stocks of about 350,000 units and 9,000 nets including 1,900 beach seines, described as often rudimentary and of low performance, which is what caps the catch before any stock question arises.
- Sizes the downstream chain at nearly 20,000 agents, with more than 12,000 local women traders and 7,000 madames sara, plus a pyramidal intermediary structure of about 100 networks and 1,600 buyers supplying exporters.
- Puts annual production at about 15,000 tonnes of fish and 600 tonnes of other products, generating value in the billions of gourdes with annual value added of 2 billion gourdes.
- Identifies losses in conservation rather than in catch: value loss of the order of 40 percent from deficient conservation systems, with margins of about 20 percent taken at each stage of the chain.
- Budgets the programme at 400 million gourdes, about 80 million a year over five years.
- Sets the poverty context it works in, with 56 percent of the population below the extreme poverty line in 2001.
Produced from the October 2008 exercise in which MARNDR convened some fifty livestock, veterinary and agronomy professionals - from the Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine, specialized NGOs, private operators and producer organizations - to draft policy for the animal production and fisheries sub-sectors across seven themes. This volume covers maritime fisheries: the state of the sub-sector, the constraints on artisanal fishing, and the ministry's development program for 2010-2014. It is the fisheries counterpart to the aquaculture, milk and livestock-environment programs issued alongside it, and predates the fuller artisanal fisheries development program (PDPA) of 2016-2017.
How to cite
Government of Haiti; Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development (MARNDR), 2010, National Programme for the Development of Maritime Fisheries in Haiti, https://agripubhaiti.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Peche_-_MARNDR_2010.pdf