March 6, 2006

India's shrimp industry urged to focus on tiger shrimps

Cultivating larger sizes of black tiger shrimps, exporting value-added products and expanding the domestic market should be part of the strategy to develop India's shrimp industry, said P.K. Ramachandran, president of a fisheries company.

Addressing the annual meeting of the Society of Aquaculture Professionals on Friday, he said India would have to identify its niche in shrimp production.

Shrimp farming centres in South-East Asia, India and in Latin America are all concentrating their efforts on the markets in the US, Europe or Japan.

China, another major producer, is currently consuming most of its own production and could switch to become a net importer, providing India with a new market, he pointed out.

In South-East Asia, production is growing rapidly in Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia, while India's production has stagnated.

In recent years, South-East Asia has shifted to cultivating low-cost and smaller-size shrimps because of disease problems in black tiger shrimps

Thailand and the Latin American countries are concentrating on vannamei species while Vietnam and Indonesia produce both vannamei and black tiger. This meant that competition is stiff in the smaller grades, leaving India with the opportunity to produce black tiger shrimps of larger sizes.

India should also look at moving away from export of raw material, block-frozen shrimp, and look at value-added products which were in greater demand in the developed world, he said.