Clear policies and a plan are needed to ensure the optimal and orderly growth of aquaculture industries in Greece's freshwater, brackishwater and marine environments. This plan will aim to ensure that scarce national resources are deployed efficiently, and that the necessary infrastructure and support services are harmoniously developed, thereby enabling these industries to achieve their production targets. The plan will also ensure that, in developing this sector, adverse social and economic consequences are avoided.
The aquaculture plan must have a real and positive effect on the process of development, and its success will be measured in these terms, and not in terms of the complexity of the the planning process itself. As economic development will depend on public effort and investment, and will use national resources, the most important role of the plan will be the creation of a structure, or structures, for the coordination of national effort.
Continued public support for investment in aquaculture development will, in the long term, be dependent on a clearly perceivable positive social and economic return from such investment. Consequently, continuous monitoring of the costs and benefits of support to aquaculture, based on realistic assessments of present and future production, will be incorporated into planning and public expenditure review procedures.
The plan identifies the major present weaknesses and needs, and gives advice to overcome these problems; the plan furthermore assigns priorities to the various actions that are needed.
The plan provides for the establishment of a national coordination structure, which will enable information on the development needs and priorities of the industry to be continually reviewed and updated.
A framework for public and private sector involvement in aquaculture, identifying the differing roles and contributions of all the parties involved, is presented in Appendix 2. This framework will help to avoid unnecessary competition, or the overlap and duplication of work in the various sectors and agencies involved, thereby using national resources more efficiently.
