The Hindu Business Line : MPEDA to promote seafood at retail outlets

The Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) will step in to promote co-branding with major retail chains and promote a common brand that could be available to the trade for marketing marine products, according to the authority's Chairman, Mr Mohan Kumar.

He said the country should promote Black Tiger shrimp products in the global market, besides other cultural marine finfish and fresh water species.

On the sidelines of the stakeholder conference on marine products here on Thursday, the Minister of State for Commerce, Mr Jairam Ramesh, said the MPEDA had already held two rounds of discussion with the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) in this regard. The idea, he said, was to utilise the Mother Dairy fruits and vegetables networks for promoting some of the acceptable brands of marine products in the domestic markets. The domestic market for processed marine products was crucial, he said.

Beyond shrimp

According to Mr Kumar, the time has come to diversify into developing and marketing other marine product species since "we have failed in the past to develop technology for finfish farming." That is why MPEDA went in for export-oriented research to tap new products, he said. This is swayed by the fact that most of the leading exporters of marine products also had a strong base in non-shrimp product portfolio.

He sadi: "We have a problem of residues in shrimps and that is the need for instituting healthy shrimp broodstocks" through the setting up of the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Aquaculture at Kodiyaghat, in the island.

Alongside this, efforts were on to develop fresh water finfish and prawns in States such as Maharashtrawhere a lot of saline-affected lands in sugarcane belt was available, as also in Gujarat.

He said the Authority was also keen on producing one million tonnes more fish through brackish water aquaculture as the yield is currently around 200,000 tonnes.

As shrimps account for half of total marine products in the country, efforts were on to produce other species, but land constraints hamper the move. Hence the emphasis has shifted to cage culture, he added.

Tapping tuna

To a specific query on Andaman and Nicobar islands being a major tuna fishing base, Mr Kumar said, to make this happen, provision of infrastructural facilities such as deep sea fishing berth, freezing facility and facility for chartered flights to land at Port Blair and airlift Sashimi grade tuna would have to be explored.

He said the world tuna market is $9 billion today and "our share is negligible, though we exported 500 tonnes of tuna to Japan last year." He said non-resident Indians (NRI) wereshowing interest in this regard. Ultimately, Mr Kumar said, through the Vision Document outlined here, "we want to see that the areas where growth opportunities are available are adequately highlighted so that resources from all the available agencies such as Fisheries Development Board are focused on these areas" to realise higher value-added exports of marine products from the country in the foreseeable future.

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