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Uruguay Fishing
Uruguay first began to develop a fishing industry in
the
1970s. Previously, fishermen from other countries had
taken
advantage of the rich resources off Uruguay's coast, but
there
was no concerted national fishing effort. The military
government
enacted the five-year National Fishing Development Plan in
1974
as part of its attempt to develop new economic activities
with
export potential. Under the plan, administered by the
government's National Fishing Institute, fishing expanded
markedly. By the late 1980s, there were over 700 fishing
vessels
in the fishing fleet, compared with only 300 in 1974.
Furthermore, the number of large oceangoing vessels
increased
from five to seventy during this period. Oceangoing
vessels held
more fish and allowed longer voyages to distant waters.
The
latter capability became important after most nations
(including
Uruguay and neighboring Argentina) extended their
exclusive
economic zone from 3 to 200 miles in the mid-1970s,
restricting
access to many coastal fisheries. As the fishing fleet
expanded,
port facilities were improved. The port facilities of
Montevideo,
Piriápolis, and Punta del Este were modernized, and an
entirely
new port was constructed at La Paloma.
The intensified fishing effort produced favorable
results;
the catch grew from 16,000 tons in 1974 to 144,000 tons in
1981,
remaining at about 140,000 tons per year in the late
1980s. Not
all aspects of the government's plan were successful,
however. It
called for sizable catches of species that could be
processed
(canned) for export, such as tuna and sardines. As of
1987,
however, fishermen were only catching a few hundred tons
of tuna
per year, not enough to supply a cannery. The sardine
catch was
also very small. Although those two species proved
difficult to
catch, Uruguay's fishermen had success catching Argentine
hake,
Atlantic croaker, and striped weakfish. The
fish-processing
industry also developed as the catch increased. Processing
capacity in the late 1980s was about 250,000 tons,
considerably
above the estimated annual catch of 200,000 tons for all
kinds of
fish, except the anchovy.
About half of Uruguay's catch was exported during the
late
1980s, in line with the government's goal of increasing
nontraditional exports. Argentine hake (a whitefish
similar to
cod) was the leading export. In 1988, however, Uruguayan
processing companies reported that world prices for
Argentine
hake had fallen below production costs because of the
competition
from cod suppliers. Although prices later recovered, many
companies began to process and export alternative species,
such
as anchovy, mullet, and bluefish. The industry's exports
reached
US$81 million in 1987, as compared with US$65 million in
1986 and
US$1.2 million in 1974. The United States imported 30
percent of
Uruguay's fish; Brazil imported 23 percent; and Japan, the
Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), Saudi Arabia,
and
Israel each imported between 4 and 6 percent.
In 1990 an important issue for the Lacalle
administration was
Uruguay's access to the fisheries of the South Atlantic
near
Antarctica, as well as to fishery resources in Argentina's
coastal waters. Lacalle told Visión magazine in
early 1990
that he strongly supported the idea of an international
conference, under the auspices of the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations, to regulate fishing in
the
South Atlantic.
Data as of December 1990
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