The authority is making all efforts to expand and maintain the Davao Fishport Complex (DFC) as an international fishport would attract other foreign fishing vessels to call the port in Davao City. DFC manager Mario Malinao said they need to upgrade the facilities to attract other foreign commercial fishing vessels to ship their cargo here. It is said that the fishport which is located in a 4.5 hectares land is the second smallest port among the eight fishports in the country.
Philippines now has three fishports in Mindanao. Aside from Davao the other two are located in General Santos City and Zamboanga City, one in Iloilo City for the Visayas and four in Luzon. Malinao told that the fishport has lot of potentials saying that good facilities would attract other fishing vessels. According to him nearly 5,000 foreign fishing vessels operating in the international waters in the Pacific and Davao Fishport todate only gets 300 to 320 of them.
It is informed that Davao has all the requisite potential to be an international transshipment port because of the regular flight from Davao which carry the tuna for auction to California, USA, Vancouver, Canada, Tokyo, Fukuda and Osaka in Japan. Malinao explained that the Port Authority of Guam had been servicing long line vessels since 1986 compared to the Davao Fishport Complex that only started operation in 1995.
