Seafood export rises 22% to nearly $7.1 billion in 2017-18

Seafood export rose 22 per cent to nearly $7.1 billion in 2017-18 as compared to $5.8 billion a year before. Frozen shrimp and frozen fish were the prime items. In terms of quantity it was nearly 1.38 million tonnes (mt), from 1.13 mt earlier.

“With policy support, we intend to achieve $10 billion by 2022,” said A Jayathilak, chairman of the Marine Products Export Development Authority.

The rise, he said was despite a surge in supply of shrimp from Ecuador, Argentina, Vietnam and Thailand, beside a drop in price. There were also issues on antibiotic residue in Indian shipments.

The US took the largest share of Indian seafood, at $2.3 billion or 32.8 per cent. Frozen shrimp was 95 per cent of this total by value. The US was followed by Southeast Asia, 31.6 per cent in dollar terms. The European Union took 15.8 per cent and Japan took 6.3 per cent. Around 4.1 per cent went to West Asia/North Africa.

Export to the US rose 31.6 per cent and to Southeast Asia by 29.4 per cent, in dollar terms. In the latter, Vietnam’s share was 79.3 per cent, followed by Thailand at 11.6 per cent. Vietnam alone imported 413,518 tonnes of our seafood.