Seafood exporters on Japan mission

Prawn shipments down 50% following quality complaints

A high-level delegation of the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) is going to Japan in March to convince Japanese buyers about the improved quality of Indian seafoods.

Japan is one of the leading importers of Indian seafood.

Exports to Japan had declined by more than 50 per cent in the last couple of years owing to the poor quality of seafood, mainly prawns, shipped from India.

India exported Black Tiger (tiger prawn) and Scampi (Lobster) to Japan and a large percentage of exports were shipped from West Bengal.

MPEDA was now giving special emphasis on value added export and reprocessing of fish for sale to buyers other countries to achieve the target of Rs 20,000 crore worth of seafood exports by 2008-09.

Seafood exports were at around Rs 6,700 crore in the last fiscal. MPEDA would be organising the 15th India International Seafood Show (IISS) in February at Kolkata to boost seafood exports.

The director (marketing) of MPEDA, K Thomas, told reporters here that the delegation would try to convince the Japanese importers about the improved quality of Indian prawns.

"Japanese exports fell owing to two reasons", he said.

The use of antibiotics in aquaculture and use of water bodies not suited for Black Tiger (tiger prawn) cultivation were to blame, he claimed.

"If you cultivate Black Tiger in non-saline water then there will be some kind of smell when cooking, but due to rapid expansion, some non saline water bodies were used earlier in Andhra Pradesh for this," he said.

Thomas pointed out that the use of antibiotics had been minimised. Exports to Japan were around 18 per cent of the total Indian exports.

Japan was the third largest market after Europe which accounted for 27 per cent, and the United States which bought 23.41 per cent of exports.

The executive committee member of MPEDA, R Banerjee, said that a special session would be conducted at IISS for processed food export.

He pointed out that there existed substantial idle capacity in the seafood processing sector in the country. This could be utilised for value added export as well as for reprocessing of fish. "We have idle capacity to the extent of 80 per cent," he added.