Maldives Industrial Fisheries Company (MIFCO) has raised the purchase price of fish to MVR 17 per kilogram, effective Tuesday.
In a tweet posted on Tuesday, the Managing Director of the State Trading Organization (STO) Hussein Amr said MIFCO would be purchasing fish from fishers for MVR 17 per kg. He noted that the operations of MIFCO had been further streamlined and that its expenditure had been reduced. He added that the export of canned tuna had been increased to widen the foreign market for fish products.
MIFCO's purchase price has been increased while President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih had announced that from March onward, MIFCO would raise the price per kilo of tuna purchased from fishers to tie to global prices for tuna. The President said if prices are high in global markets, MIFCO will buy fish at a higher price.
MIFCO used to buy a kilogram of fish for prices between MVR 19 and 22 for seven years before reducing the purchase price in September 2020. Since then, the price per kg has hovered between MVR 13 and 15. The change comes while the global fish price has held steady at MVR 1,700 per tonne for over a year.
