India eyes doubling seafood exports to $14 bn by 2025

Visakhapatnam/Kolkata: Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Anupriya Patel on Wednesday exuded confidence that India is expected to increase exports from the seafood industry to $14 billion by 2025 amid sustained growth of three per cent.

The country exported 1.36 million MT of seafood during 2021-22, earning an all-time record of $7.76 billion. “In two years from now, we plan to achieve a target of 14 billion dollars,” she said after inaugurating the 23rd edition of India International Seafood Show (IISS) in Kolkata.

Noting that India is already among the world’s top five seafood-exporting countries, the Minister said 17 per cent of the country’s agricultural exports comprise fish and allied products. “We are the world’s third-largest fish producer, second-largest aquaculture producer and fourth-largest seafood exporter,” she pointed out at the start of the three-day event being organised by the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) in association with the Seafood Exporters Association of India (SEAI).

She said Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Aquaculture has set up a central quarantine facility for the first time in the country in Chennai to check the imported broodstock of L Vannamei shrimps. It is also setting up in Visakhapatnam, a Broodstock Multiplication Centre of tiger shrimps, developed from its facility at Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The biennial showpiece event in the marine sector is being held amid the government’s vigorous attempt to regain buoyancy in seafood exports in the post-pandemic phase, offering a robust platform to various industry stakeholders for inking business deals, forging new contacts, leveraging market linkages and introducing new technologies and products to the global market.

While noting duty concessions on the import of vital shrimp/fish feed ingredients announced in the Union Budget 2023-24, she highlighted the government’s measures towards protection of the interest of the country’s aqua farmers and the sector as a whole.

“We slashed the import duty from 15 per cent to five per cent for fish meal/krill meal and vitamin premixes, whereas the duty has been halved to 15 per cent for fish lipid oil and algal prime,” she said, reiterating a “remarkable impact” on the earnings of aqua famers in terms of savings on the total cost.