India: Deep and Wide Ocean of Opportunity
For Sustainably Increasing Fishery Exports
Reported by JOHN M. SAULNIER

Kurvilla Thomas, Director of Marketing, Marine Products Export Development Authority of India.

While acknowledging that the recession bearing down on many importing countries has made 2009 “a tough year,” Kurvilla Thomas believes that India is nonetheless on track to become a US $4 billion exporter of seafood and aquaculture products by 2012. The goal will be met while maintaining the sustainability of fisheries and industries alike, added the Marine Products Export Development Authority’s (MPEDA) director of marketing.

Addressing an MPEDA-sponsored luncheon during the recently-held European Seafood Exposition in Brussels, he pointed out that India ranks as the world’s second largest aquaculture producer (2.47 million tons were harvested last year) as well as the third largest fish producing nation (6.09 million tons were landed).

Export tonnage rose 10% in 2007-08, while value advanced by one percent to almost US $1.9 billion.
“So we are sustaining our growth,” and along the way have succeeded in producing “the first organic-certified scampi in the world, GIS mapping of farms, and introduced cluster concept shrimp farming,” stated Thomas.

Frozen shrimp sales generated 52% of total export revenues in the seafood sector last year, followed by frozen fish at 17%. Europe was India’s largest market in value terms, taking 35% of exports. More than half of the nation’s 421 fishery processing plants are EU-approved, as are 27 independent coldstore operations. Total cold storage capacity exceeds 1.45 million metric tons (MT).

With a coastline of 8,041 kilometers and a 2.02-million-square-kilometer exclusive economic zone, India’s marine resource potential has been assessed at 3.9 million MT. The present level of exploitation is 3.32 million MT. Tuna is said to be an especially under-exploited fish.

Anwar Hashim, national president of the Seafood Exporters Association of India, also spoke during the luncheon. Addressing importers in particular, he said that India is currently utilizing only 18-20% of its EU-approved plant capacity, processing an average of 2,000 tons per day. “As most of the time our plants are idle, we need to import more raw materials to boost output.”