Australia to aid seafood export from Vizag region

By SNV Sudhir

Visakhapatnam, June 11, 2013: Australia has evinced keen interest in partnering with India’s prestigious Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) and other similar institutes for a technological  and commercial collaboration between the countries so that seafood could be exported from the Vizag region in a big way.

Though the seafood exports from Andhra Pradesh especially from Vizag region showed a healthy 20 per cent growth in volumes over the last two years, lack of better infrastructure and fish landing facilities have been bothering the seafood exporters.  Sea food especially tuna is exported to USA, Japan and European Union.

Australia’s counsel general for South India, David Holly told Deccan Chronicle that they are in talks with both the state and union governments on the possible technology exchange. “There is lot of shore based fishing activity here and the deep sea fishing, aqua culture and Tuna fishing has to be explored for which Australia would offer technology exchange. We will also look into providing better logistics to the local fishermen for them to export fresh catch quickly to the countries like Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. We will also see if we can provide some value addition to the fish caught by local fishermen for them to export to other countries,” he told this correspondent.

The state, which had over 55-60 exporters about 10 years back now has only 40 exporters.  In recent times seafood is also being exported to Russia, Vietnam, South Africa and the Middle East countries from this region

The state's seafood industry, forms a 40 precent share in India's seafood exports. Exports from Andhra Pradesh were registered at  around Rs 10,000 crore in 2009-10 and registered an increase to Rs 13,000 crore the following year.

According to Holly, Australia’s government teams would be regularly visiting Vizag to “understand the city better and to identify” key sectors for commercial collaboration. Holly observed that there was a wide spectrum of opportunities here in Vizag including infrastructure, information technology and education.

The diplomat further said that they have been encouraging more student exchange programmes for better understanding of both the countries by the students.

“Australian students don’t have idea of contemporary India and the same with Indian students about Australia. So we are encouraging more student exchange programmes and  tying up with Indian varsities for twinning courses, urging local institutes to open their campus in our country. We have also issued 10,000 scholarships for the students of many Asian countries,” he said.