Status and growth in fish export from India

Fisheries sector plays a significant role in the Indian economy in terms of its contribution to growth and development. The contribution of fisheries sector to Indian merchandise trade and to world fishery trade is substantial.. Fish production has increased from 7.52 lakh tonnes (5.34 lakh tonnes for marine and 2.18 lakh tonnes for inland fisheries) in the year 1950–51 to 114.09 lakh tonnes (36.41 lakh tonnes for marine and 77.69 lakh tonnes for inland fisheries) in 2016–17. The growth sector of fish sector contributes through its share in GDP and foreign exchange earnings gained through the export of fish and fishery products. During 2016–17, the volume of fish and fishery products exported from India was 134948 tonnes worth Rs.378709.0 crores. The export mainly consist of frozen shrimp verities (41.10%) followed by fin fish (25.64%), frozen squid (7.32%), and frozen cattle fish (5.02%), during 2017–18. The paper tries to see the revealed comparative advantage of India of this sector with its Competitors and the findings show that India's export potential for fishery product have continuously improved in the study period and the fishery sector has strong comparative advantage in terms of total world's fishery exports. India is more advantageously placed than Canada, Chile, Russian Federation, Spain, Sweden and United States of America. The analysis suggests that India is comparatively in an advantageous position compared to its competitors.