The captain of a fishing boat docked at Yangon’s Lanmadaw wharf examines a GPS device recently purchased from Fortune International. Pic: Hein Latt Aung

MARINE navigation and communication equipment is selling well in the wake of Cyclone Nargis as the industry rebuilds following the disaster, according to distributors in Yangon,.

The distributors said last week that both state- and privately-owned coastal cargo boats and fishing trawlers were leading the uptake of Global Positioning Systems (GPS), radar and echo sounders, the three main types of marine navigation and communication equipment.

“Our company only managed to sell 75 of these devices from the beginning of 2007 to May this year, just before Cyclone Nargis struck. But we noticed amazingly that we sold more than 70 units from since the cyclone to the middle of August,” said U Soe Soe Thaung, manager of Fortune International Limited, one of Myanmar’s three navigation equipment distributors.

“The sales volume for the last two and a half months is equal to the 18 months before Nargis. Demand is still going strong and we had to bring in another batch of 70 units from South Korea this month,” he said.

“The bad experience of Nargis has compelled many of the coastal vessels and fishing trawlers to install sophisticated devices; the uptake is much greater than before the cyclone. They [boat-owners] realise that such devices are necessary for their daily operations and so the demand in the market for these devices has increased.”

Fortune’s deputy man-ager, U Lin Aung, said the main reason for the increase in sales was the replacement of boats destroyed by the May cyclone.
“The Myanmar Depart-ment of Fisheries is giving loans to the fishing industry to get it going again and those businessmen are using that money to install these devices,” U Lin Aung said.

The higher sales are also part of a push to modernise the industry in a bid to increase catch sizes and make Myanmar fishermen more competitive with their Asian counterparts.

“The devices can indicate the vessel’s location, terrain, depth of water and possible dangerous areas easily. It can also indicate the location of the big flock of fishes and shorten the effective waterways. Those are the main advantages, which can save time and money for the fishing businesses.”
Fishermen have also been persuaded by stories of boats surviving the storm because of GPS devices, U Lin Aung said.

“On the night when Nargis hit the Ayeyarwady delta region, three cargo vessels that had been sailing along the Myanmar coastline were saved because they were using GPS, while thousands of other vessels in the delta were destroyed in the deadly storm. Those ships managed to shelter from the storm by entering the safe waterways that the echo sounders and GPS systems indicated.”

U Nyi Nyi Min, manager of Concordian International, agreed that marine technology sales had risen post-Nargis.

“Our normal sales volume of these devices was averaging about 100 units per year before Cyclone Nargis. But we have sold about 50 in just a two-month period after the cyclone and the demand still going strong,” U Nyi Nyi Min said.

He said that, while the devices are popular with coastal vessels, they are particularly useful for river-going vessels, as they can detect the changes in the delta waterways following Cylone Nargis. The state of many of the waterways has changed because of the storm and the old navigation charts are unable to show their new condition. Instead, vessels have to rely on the echo sounders, radar and GPS, which can accurately indicate the terrain of the area and ensure a safer voyage.

All the marine navigation devices are controlled by a computerised monitoring system that incorporates GPS, maps and updated terrain data. The devices imported by Fortune International are installed with software that gives the vessel operator all the relevant data in Myanmar language – another reason for their popularity.

According to users, there are approximately ten different models available in the market, with prices ranging from K240,000 to K10 million.

Marine navigation devices began entering Myanmar’s private marine sector after 2000. However, many fishermen have been slow to incorporate the new technology and most operators continue to run their vessels with the traditional methods. There are three companies currently distributing the devices in Myanmar: Fortune, Concordia and MEC.