With the financial crisis unlikely to die down in some time, the situation of India’s seafood export industry is set to worsen as prices of most items have sharply dropped. It is an especially grave scenario for products such as shrimp and squid, which make up most of the seafood export basket.
An outlook published by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said shrimp prices, which are already low because of the economic slowdown, will weaken further as the import demand will be low.
While the US and Japanese markets have been gloomy in the recent years, EU has been a ray of hope for shrimp exporters. However, latest estimates indicate the EU market is also facing problems in importing seafood. Shrimp import by EU nations had dropped 10 per cent to 337,600 tonnes in the first six months of this year. There had been a massive drop in imports by Spain and Italy and the only country that increased the intake was France.
Squid prices also remained low in global markets mainly due to the low buying interest showed by Japan.
According to the FAO outlook, rush by the Argentine squid fishing fleet to sell at discounted prices, has also caused a decline in the prices of squid in the global market in recent months.
Prices of farmed species such as European sea bream and turbot have fallen to record low levels, thanks to huge increase in production. The report also said prices of wild white fish, yellow fin Tuna and farmed Salmon and Tilapia remained more or less the same and cat fish prices, which tumbled earlier this year, are recovering. The low price regime is likely to continue till January 2009 when new fishing season in South West Atlantic begins, the report said.
The current crisis has already crippled the export prospects of India as the number of cancellations are on a rise citing various reasons.