Value Of Indian Shrimp Exports May Drop: Experts

According to experts, the value of Indian shrimp exports is likely to drop in the current financial year unless the exporters get into value-added production.

Indian shrimp exports have been mainly hit due to lower price realisation in the current year.

The shrimp prices have remained depressed on account of recession in the Japanese economy compounded by the US slowdown. Japan accounts for 41 per cent of Indian shrimp exports.

Shrimp exports from India are largely in frozen form and value addition is very low. Besides exports, the large domestic market remains untapped as shrimp is mainly marketed in coastal areas, while the non-coastal areas remain neglected either due to lack of cold storage or transportation facilities.

Out of the around Rs 6,400 crore fish exports last year, shrimp alone constituted 27 per cent of the total volume. But in terms of value, shrimp constituted 71 per cent of the total fish exports from India.

Another factor that affected the Indian shrimp and other fish exports is due to large cost of product recall by importing countries.

"The importing countries have expressed concern on issue of hygiene in some of the Indian shrimp exports, as high levels of contamination has been found by the US Hazard Analysis Critical Control Authority. Both the value and volume is not growing in Indian shrimp exports and the only way is to add value to exports in the form of fish snacks and other value added products," Uday Sant of FMC Food Tech Asia Pacific said.

Some of the fish processing majors from the European Union have already initiated steps to move their bases to India due to the low labour costs in India.

The EU firms are also looking at tapping the Indian market for value added shrimp and other fish products.