February 23, 2010

India mulls over similar farm benefits for seafood sector

The Indian Ministry of Agriculture (MA) may finally consider the long-pending demand of the fisheries sector to accord it incentives and benefits enjoyed by the agriculture sector.

With the seafood exports industry, the foreign exchange earner of the fisheries sector, pitching strongly for the 'full-scale agri tag' at the ongoing India International Seafood Fair 2010 in Chennai, both the commerce and agriculture ministers have in-principle agreed to the demand.

While commerce minister Anand Sharma had urged the MA to kick-start the initiative towards this, minister of state for agriculture, KV Thomas, was quick to take the cue saying that seafood exporters could get export benefits once the fisheries sector gets the status equivalent to that of agriculture.

Earlier, pointing out the problems faced by the industry, Seafood Exporters Association of India (SEAI) president Anwar Hashim said that the industry has been going through a difficult phase as there were threats from the US and the EU markets on quality standards and measures like anti-dumping duties and unfavourable non-tariff barriers.

"Though over production in countries like Thailand and China had given stiff competition to us, we could sustain our exports to countries like the US, China and Japan," said Hashim.

Marine Product Export Development Authority (MPEDA) chairperson Leena Nair said as a logical extension of its initiatives to project the capabilities of the seafood processing sector and to optimise the installed capacity utilisation, MPEDA has been implementing various schemes aimed at increasing the production from culture and capture fisheries, value addition and marketing thrust.

The MPEDA expects value addition and production of high quality ready-to-eat marine products in consumer packs to achieve the target of US$6 billion worth of seafood exports by 2017.

According to MPEDA, the demand for value-added seafood products, especially those in consumer packs, will increase in future due to combination of factors such as higher disposable income, sophistication of tastes and declining cooking skills. These factors have resulted in creation of more opportunities for the processing industry.

Exports of marine products from India during the first nine months of 2009-10 were at 470,231 tonnes valued at Rs7,259 crore. Compared to the same period in the previous year, exports clocked a meager 0.61% growth in quantity, 8.37% in rupee earnings and 0.81% in dollar earnings.