Financial crunch keeps most mechanised boats anchored

A large percentage of the mechanised boats in the state continue to stay moored on shore, despite the start of the fishing season two days ago, after the normal 45 day fishing holiday.

Mechanised boat operators on the entire east coast of the country attribute this to the lack of funds to repair their boats.

There are about 2,800 mechanised boats operating from the Visakhapatnam, Kakinada, Machilipatnam and Krishnapatnam fishing harbours of the state.

Since the start of the fishing season on June 1, only 750-800 boats have ventured out to the sea while the remaining boats remain firmly anchored in the fishing harbour.

Each boat requires between Rs 1-1.5 lakh for repairs and oil stocks to start the operations after the fishing holiday. During the last fishing season, each boat operator had lost heavily due to poor catches and fall in the purchase prices of shrimp.

In the normal course of events, seafood exporters pay an advance of between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1 lakh to each boat operator to send the boats for fishing.

In turn, the seafood exporters take the day's catch from the boat operators to recover the advanced money. This time round though, seafood exporters are not coming forward to give financial support to the boat operators.

"Shrimp prices have come down in the international market due to the anti-dumping duty threat from the US government. At the same time, buyers in Japan have also not shown too smuch interest in buying shrimp. Due to these reasons we are not giving advances to boat owners," an exporter said.

"This apart because of poor catches, several lakhs of advances given by the seafood exporters in the last two to three years have still not been recovered. In such a situation, the seafood exporters dare not extend financial assistance to boat operators," he said.

Speaking to Business Standard, P C Appa Rao, president of Andhra Pradesh Mechanised Fishing Boat Operators' Association, said: "Normally, immediately after the end of the fishing holiday between 60 and 70 per cent of the boat operators start going for shrimp catches, but at present only between 25 and 30 per cent of the operators have sent their vessels for fishing."

"Of the boats that did go out to sea, only about 12 per cent of the mechanised boats went for a seven to 10 day voyage while the remaining went for fishing operations only a day, due to the lack of financial support," Appa Rao said.

Each boat operator requires around Rs 8,000 to send one boat for a day's voyage and between Rs 60,000 and Rs 70,000 for a 7-10 day voyage. Many of the boat operators are not able to send their boats even for a day's voyage due to the severe financial crunch, Appa Rao said.

"If catches are very good for the boats which have gone for voyage, then some of the other operators will make an effort to send their boats for fishing, by raising money from private lenders," he said.