India's seafood exports increased 11 per cent to Rs 8,083.82 crore (Rs 7,273.93 crore) during the first 10 months of the current fiscal.
The growth was achieved despite global economic recession leading to lower consumption of high-end seafood products, sources in the seafood export sector said.
There were also problems such as anti-dumping duties imposed by the US on shrimp imports from India, export rejections on some seafood consignment to the EU on quality concerns and problems with the Japanese markets.
Despite the adverse global economic challenges and India-specific problems, the volume of seafood exports grew four per cent to 5.31 lakh tonnes during April-January 2009-10. Export earnings in dollar terms have increased by over four per cent to $1.704 billion.
Shrimp exports
Shrimp exports continued to dominate seafood exports and accounted for 44 per cent of the total volume. However, shrimp volumes have been coming down over the years and today account for just 20 per cent. Even in foreign exchange earnings, shrimp accounted for 44 per cent of the total realisation.
Close to 40 per cent of the total volume of exports was contributed by frozen fish.Although there was no significant growth in volumes on a year-on-year basis, the value realisation has moved up close to 10 per cent. The bulk of the frozen fish exports would have been contributed by China which have been importing low-value fishes such as ribbon from India in recent years.
Cuttlefish, squid
Frozen cuttlefish and squid have all along been dominating exports to the EU. While there have been handsome gains in the export of cuttlefish, squid exports have been looking down.
Squid exports dropped in volume by 12 per cent and even more sharply in value by 20 per cent. This was more or less compensated by a growth in cuttlefish exports by close to 10 per cent in value.
Dried, live and chilled items were some other category of Indian seafood exports during the period. Dried items have almost doubled in volume during the first 10 months of the fiscal although the total realisation has not grown correspondingly. Meanwhile, exports of live items have been flourishing to the neighbouring South-East Asian countries. Live items exports increased both in volume and value over last year.
The EU continued to be the most dominant export destination accounting for 30 per cent of the value of exports followed by Japan with 13 per cent and South-East Asia also with 13 per cent.
Source :