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Angola Fishing
Fishing was a major industry before independence. In
the early
1970s, there were about 700 fishing boats, and the annual
catch was
more than 300,000 tons. Including the catch of foreign
fishing
fleets in Angolan waters, the combined annual catch was
estimated
at 1 million tons. Following independence and into the
late 1980s,
however, the local fishing industry had fallen into
disarray, the
result of the flight of local skilled labor and the return
of the
fishing boats to Portugal. By 1986 only 70 of the 143
fishing boats
in Namibe, the port that normally handled two-thirds of
the Angolan
catch, were operable. Furthermore, most of the
fish-processing
factories were in need of repair. Once an exporter of fish
meal, by
1986 Angola had insufficient supplies for its own market.
Some of the foreign fishing fleets operating in Angolan
waters
were required by the government to land a portion of their
catch at
Angolan ports to increase the local supply of fish.
Fishing
agreements of this kind had been reached with the Soviet
Union,
which operated the largest number of boats in Angolan
waters, and
with Spain, Japan, and Italy. Spain also agreed to help
rehabilitate the Angolan fishing industry in exchange for
fishing
rights. In other cases, the government allowed foreign
fleets to
export their entire catch in exchange for license fees.
In the mid-1980s, the government began rehabilitating
the
fishing industry, especially in Namibe and Benguela
provinces. The
first priority was to replace and repair aging equipment.
To
accomplish this goal, the government was receiving a
significant
amount of foreign assistance. In 1987 the EEC announced
plans to
provide funds to help rebuild the Dack Doy shipyards and
two
canning plants in Tombua. Spain sold Angola thirty-seven
steel-hull
boats for US$70 million, and fourteen modern fishing boats
were on
order from Italy.
Data as of February 1989
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