Seafood exports from the country during the current fiscal are likely to fall short of last year's performance due to worsening conditions in Europe and a bad vanammei crop.
Anwar Hashim, managing director of Abad Fisheries, and former president of the Seafood Exporters Association of India, told FE that revenues from exports are likely to be 10-15% lower than last year's $3.5 billion. Exports during 2011-12 were at 862,021 tonne, valued at R16,597.23 crore ($3,508.45 million). MPEDA had fixed an ambitious export target of $4.5 billion for the year 2012-13. India is the second largest fish producer in the world after China and accounts for nearly 6 % of global fish production.
"Demand from Europe is very poor and there is severe competition. Our costs have increased tremendously and we are not competitive in many products. The European market is under tremendous pressure and they are cutting down expenses," Hashim said. The US is the only market that is showing some signs of recovery, he added. In the last fiscal, exports to the European Union and the US jointly accounted for 41.13 % of the total seafood exports in dollar terms.
Demand from China and Japan is also on the wane for several reasons, Hashim said, and added that it was putting more pressure on India. "China used to buy large volumes of seafood from Pakistan and now they have cut down. Pakistan is, in turn, dumping these items in the Middle East market and hurting our prospects," he said. Prices of most of the export variety fish have declined by 25-30% in the last few months due to lower consumption by China, Iran and the European Union.
According to the data from MPEDA, exports from the country are lower by 6.9% in volume terms and 16.6% in dollar earnings during the first half of the financial year compared with the same period last fiscal.