Mr. S.S. Puri
ADG, FAO RAPA
Mr. Chairman, we in FAO greatly welcome this idea of holding the Third Session of the Governing Council of NACA in the premises of the regional office. I welcome you particularly Mr. Deputy Minister for being with us this morning despite your numerous engagements. We had the pleasure of your visit earlier during the World Food Day commemorative activities and we are very happy to see you again in our midst. This particular meeting of the Governing Council is of a very decisive character. First of all, this Council will have an opportunity to go over the programme of work and the financial arrangements for NACA for the coming years. This meeting will determine whether NACA will have a smooth period of infancy and growth. As it happens many institutions have problems of infant mortality. The first five years are crucial for a newly formed body and therefore the programme of work and budgetary arrangements will determine how far the organization is able to proceed smoothly and fulfill its role.
We in FAO have witnessed a number of new bodies getting into difficulties. In some respects, it seems easier to set up a new body than to keep it going. Therefore I wish the founders of this particular organization all success. Dr. Pillay is here, he had been a godfather to the aquaculture movement, globally speaking, and we are very happy to welcome him. We are also happy that with us in this occasion is the distinguished representative from UNDP which has given a lot of support to NACA in the project phase. I hope some support will be forthcoming for an initial period of maybe one or two years until it becomes a fully self-reliant intergovernmental body.
I am also very happy to welcome representatives from a number of international and regional organizations which are interested in fisheries and aquaculture, representatives of donor agencies, and my colleagues from FAO Headquarters who have come all the way from Rome to be with us.
In regard to aquaculture. I wish to make two comments. I notice the programme of work envisages, among others, that NACA will promote a great deal of activity in information gathering and dissemination. I hope this will receive priority because we find that one of our major problems in FAO is the statistical base which makes monitoring of aquaculture development extremely weak. There is apparently a serious lack of adequate and reliable data with regard to aquaculture. Despite that limitation, however, my general impression is that this region is the aquaculture region of the world, par excellence. Out of about 10 million tons of world's aquaculture production, as much as 8 million tons is accounted for by this region. This means that 80 per cent of world's aquaculture is in the Asia-Pacific region and, in some sense, the responsibility of NACA. In a way, aquaculture is one of the few areas where a “North-South” dialogue would not have much significance. Whatever is the worthwhile technology in aquaculture is all within this region; probably the best and the worst aquaculture could be found in the Asia-Pacific region. Therefore, the possibility of sharing good experiences and unlearning bad experiences very much exists here.
On behalf of FAO, I would like to convey all the good wishes for the success of NACA. I would again caution that as an infant organization, it should make a prudent beginning. I conclude by conveying on behalf of the Director General and on my own behalf FAO's good wishes for the success to the functioning of NACA and to the deliberation of this Governing Council.
