The Hindu Business Line : Marine exports: Govt keen on foraying into new markets

New Delhi June 5 Buoyed by the encouraging trends in marine product exports in 2006-07, the Government is keen on making forays into new markets such as Japan and China, over and above the traditional ones such as the US and the European Union through a focussed strategy of going in for value-added marine products rather than depending on frozen shrimp disproportionately, the Minister of State for Commerce, Mr Jairam Ramesh, said here on Tuesday.

Addressing a news conference here on the activities of the Marine Product Export Development Authority (MPEDA) and the Government's new initiatives, Mr Ramesh said that a review of the export performance last fiscal revealed that "we have revived the Japanese market as its share has gone up to 16 per cent in total marine product exports. Similarly, India's marine product exports to China now accounts for 14 per cent of its total marine product exports and fetched $240 million. With this, in the years to come both Japan and China would be very important markets for us."

Export target

He said the target for marine product exports in the current fiscal was pegged at $2 billion. He said that out of the $1.8-billion marine product exports, frozen shrimps accounted for 55 per cent and there was a low proportion of value-added marine product exports. That is the reason why there is a move to reduce dependence on shrimps and go in for value-added marine products.

Andaman and Nicobar Islands offers potential for tuna fish where public-private partnerships would be encouraged as a major element of export strategy. He said in MPEDA's vision, the share of value-added products such as frozen fin, frozen squid and cuttlefish in the export portfolio would be augmented from the extant 5 per cent to 75 per cent in the next five years.

Alongside, he said, efforts were being made to develop pathogen-free mother shrimp brood stocks in order to minimise the incidence of shrimps affected by diseases. Andaman and Nicobar Islands islands would be declared a bio-safety zone and the pathogen-free brood stocks developed here would be supplied to all the hatcheries in the country by the middle of 2009, he said.

Shrimp feed centres

Mr Ramesh said that as the country was spending Rs 50 crore a year for shrimp feed by way of imports, efforts would be undertaken to set up shrimp feed centres in Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu.

Some States such as Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and West Bengal have done well in brackish water aquaculture and the effort would now be to extend it to other important coastal States such as Gujarat and Maharashtra where the existing potential were grossly inadequately exploited, Mr Ramesh said. Efforts were also on to develop organic aquaculture, which is increasingly patronised abroad, he added.

Plans were afoot to turn the entire sector in Kerala as organic in the next couple of years with assistance from Swiss Development Agency, the Minister said. It was the Government's vision to make India a seafood processing hub, he said. Though marine product exports might have a small export receipt of $2 billion per annum, their contribution in terms of direct and indirect employment and livelihood security to dependents on aquaculture was too high to be ignored, he added.

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