RIYADH, 17 September 2007 — Ramadan is never good for fishmongers and this year isn’t any different. Vendors at Saudi fish markets have been bracing for the seasonal dip in sales, attributed to the usual rise in demand for ground lamb, which is used as an ingredient in traditional treats like sambousas and shourba.
Mohammed Alhaji, manager of Tabuk Fish Co., estimates that sales will fall between 15 and 35 percent during the holy month of fasting.
“The decline will be smaller in the coastal region because meals there tend to have more seafood than in the interior,” he said, adding that there is a common misconception that seafood exacerbates dehydration, leading some people to avoid it during the fasting days.
Oddly, the decline in demand doesn’t seem to affect retail prices. Like everything else, seafood prices are also increasing. For example, a kilogram of shrimp or tuna in Jeddah usually retails for about SR20, but with the advent of Ramadan it rose to as high as SR35.
Musaad Alfayez, a seafood purveyor, said that Ramadan coinciding with summer usually makes things worse because this is the time of year when certain species of marketable fish are caught off the western coast of the Kingdom.
Alfayez explained that big seafood companies with massive cold-storage facilities can freeze away stock until after Ramadan, but smaller producers without the warehousing convenience must turn over their stock as soon as possible. “Not all companies are well equipped with these storage potentialities,” he said.
Khalifah Alswaileh, fish seller at the Qatif fish market, said that the dip tends to slowly recover as Ramadan comes to an end.
“Families start wanting new dishes to serve so they turn to seafood instead of red meat,” he said.
This shift back to seafood may have other reasons, he added. People who have let their diets go for the holy month start looking for healthier low-fat alternatives, like grilled fish.
“This is especially true with those who have health problems such as high cholesterol and diabetes and have forgotten to watch their eating habits during Ramadan,” he said.
