RIYADH: The Agricultural Development Fund (ADF) revealed plans to fund 70 percent of the total cost of projects launched as part of the Fish Farming Support Program on Monday. The announcement came during the “Investing in Fish Farming” workshop, run by the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Committee on Agriculture and Food Security and the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture. Saudi Arabia has the potential to become the world’s leading countries in fish farming. The strategies of the ADF to promote the sector, meanwhile, have also given it advantages over regional competitors, with the Kingdom’s aquaculture production set to reach 970,000 tons per year by 2029. A paper on fish farming at the workshop though, presented by Saud Al-Otaibi, aquaculture consultant at Coral Coast Co., showed that the country still imports three times as much fish as it produces. It stated that global fisheries production is set to reach 181 million tons by 2022, highlighting the demand for fish and, by extension, the viability of investment in the sector, but also raising questions over issues of sustainability, professional training, quality control and competition from other markets.