The Philippines plans to impose wider limits on fish catches for up to two years to allow depleted stocks to recover, an official said Tuesday.

The plan would force the government to allow more imports to meet demand, said Bureau of Fisheries assistant director Benjamin Tabios.

"We want to reduce the catching of fish in the next two years so that stocks will recover in order to protect our food security," he told AFP. "Importation will take up the slack."

Philippine fishery output dropped 4.1 percent from a year earlier in 2011, suggesting depletion of stocks, he said, whlie growth had been slowing in previous years.

It would take between nine months and a full year before a wider plan to cut fish catches could be put in place, he added.

The Philippines is an archipelago of almost 100 million people, many of whom depend on fish as their main source of protein. The industry accounts for about four percent of the economy, according to the bureau's records.