Brazil's Minister for Fisheries and Aquaculture Marcelo Crivella is on an official visit to Hungary at the invitation of Minister for Rural Development Sándor Fazekas. At their meeting today, the two Ministers discussed opportunities for bilateral relations in fish management, with special attention to the sharing of Hungary's wide experience and professional knowledge within the field of freshwater fish production.

Brazil is one of the world's most intensively developing countries, which would now like to make significant headway in developing fish production. The environment for this special food production sector of industry are very favourable in the South American country, and the world's largest fish-producing nations are competing to clinch a role in several. wide-ranging development projects. Hungary begins the competition with an advantage, as many fish management professionals from Hungary have already been working in Brazil for some time.



The objective of the current high-level visit is for the two countries to discuss their aquaculture development plans and to enable Hungary to present ways in which it could become involved in the development of fish management in Brazil. Previous experience in Brazil, existing professional relations and the new fish breeding technologies that have recently been developed in Hungary provide an excellent basis for discussions. Hungary also has high levels of experience and capacities in training professionals and within the field of research and development. Minister Fazekas and Hungarian fish management experts will be presenting these opportunities to the Brazilian delegation during the course of their visit. In addition to visiting a fish production unit that applies state-of-the-art technology and a fish farm that showcases methods for modernising traditional lake fisheries, the Brazilian delegation will also be meeting with both Hungarian researchers and fish producers during the course of their visit, in addition to taking part in a professional lecture at the Szent István University's Fish Management Department.

The background to the visit was provided by the talks held by Deputy State Secretary Katalin Tóth with her counterpart from the Brazilian Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the sidelines of the Hungarian-Brazilian Economic Cooperation Committee's session in November 2012, and with whom she discussed the details of possible opportunities within the field of aquaculture research and development.

Economic relations between the two countries have developed spectacularly recently, as proved by the fact that the Hungarian-Brazilian Economic Joint Committee's session closed with a positive result for Hungarian agriculture: representatives of the agriculture ministries of Hungary and Brazil signed a declaration of intent.

(Press Office of the Ministry of Rural Development)