The main issue faced by the milkfish industry is the lack of hatchery tanks and low supply of high-quality fingerlings and feeds. Farmers’ lack of access to infrastructure and technologies (from hatchery to processing), poor market linkages, and high capital requirements are also observed to be the factors that limit the growth of the milkfish industry.

In comparison to the world’s leading milkfish producer, hatcheries in Indonesia have a higher survival rate (30% to 80%) compared to the Philippines (50%). They also have cheaper breeder’s fry (0.30 PhP/pc in the Philippines vs 0.13 PhP/pc in Indonesia) and feed. This explains why the majority of production costs in the Philippines are attributed to feeds and stocking material, making the country highly dependent on imported fry from Indonesia.

In Thailand, fish ponds were found to have more depth, therefore having more fry and fingerlings per unit area compared to fish ponds in our country. Local fisherfolks also complain about the quality of feeds in our country (i.e high feed conversion ratio), as well as the environment in the fish ponds (i.e. low dissolved oxygen). In fact, due to the deteriorating water quality that led to millions worth of fish kills in 2018 and 2019, a fishing moratorium was imposed in several municipalities of Pangasinan to rehabilitate the areas. Several studies from UP MSI and BFAR reported that the source of fry heavily influences the growth performance and survival rate of the fish fry, hence hatcheries must be placed near farms. Lastly, despite the interest and capability to export milkfish fry, companies in the Philippines expressed their concerns over the exclusion of fish fry in the list of commodities allowed for export.