By US News Agency / Asian

Though the newly-built P100-million seafood processing plant here is yet to be put into operation, the project is now being used as a model for a similar project that will be put up in Iloilo City next year.

Westly Rosario, chief of the National Integrated Fisheries Technology Center and head of the management team from the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), said he was advised by the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) that they will put up a similar project in another part of the Philippines, especially Iloilo.

“We are honored with this because this means that the KOICA likes the system that we adopted in our project in Dagupan City,” said Rosario, who -along with his team– is now preparing the operational manual for the Dagupan plant.

The project, Korea-RP (Dagupan) Seafood Processing Plant was a grant from the Korean government through the KOICA with the lot on which it was built provided by the Dagupan City government.

The plant is co-owned by the Dagupan City government and BFAR but for the initial five years, the latter will operate it first.

Rosario said the planned Iloilo plant is expected to be a bigger facility than the Dagupan model and will become the only government-owned fish processing plant in the Visayas.

While the Dagupan fish processing plant will take care of the fish processing needs of fish farmers in Northern and Central Luzon, that one on Iloilo will take care of the needs of all fish farmers in the Visayas.

At the same time, Rosario said he is still working for the initial operational budget of the Dagupan plant to enable him to complete the facility’s waste water treatment plant soon.

But he expects that funding will be a little easier next year when the operational budget of the plant will be included in the overall budget of the Department of Agriculture.

Due to the tight budget situation of the DA at almost end of the year, he said, the planned test run for the plant in September was reset sometime this October.

Rosario is optimistic, however, all things will be ironed out when BFAR Director Malcolm Sarmiento returns from a short trip abroad.