March 17, 2008

Shrinking Japanese seafood market a cause of concern for India
 

Japan is one of India's biggest seafood export market, accounting for 16.2 percent of exports in 2006-2007, but Japan has decreased its seafood imports and that could hurt India as the country has a limited export destinations.

Japan's overall shrimp imports in 2007 had dropped 8 percent to 276,000 tonnes from 301,000 tonnes in 2006, hitting a new low since 2003.

The decline was attributed to a sharp decrease in raw frozen shrimp as well as value-added shrimp imports. Japanese import value has decreased 9 percent to Rs2.25 billion (US$55.6 million) from Rs2.49 billion (US$61.5 million). 

Japan imported 28,546 tonnes of Indian shrimp in 2006, but that volume fell by 5 percent to 27,025 tonnes in 2007.

Aside from India, Japan had also decreased imports from Myanmar, Bangladesh and the Philippines, all of which are major suppliers of black tiger shrimp. The fear of antibiotics in shrimp have also caused lower imports from South Asia, according to Globfish, an arm of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Japan and Thailand have a Free Trade Agreement that could boost Thai value-added shrimp exports to Japan, which in turn could jeopardise India's shrimp exports. However, Thailand has announced a 6 percent or 30,000 tonnes cut in shrimp production, particularly vannamei shrimp, and India could capitalise on that, especially when India may soon cultivate vannamei shrimp. India is already running a pilot scheme in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

Countries with strict quality assurance programs would be able to perform better in the Japanese market, said FAO. However, the expected continuous fall in market demand of raw shrimp would affect South Asian producers such as India.