Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, May 4, 2015

Odisha government will shortly call for a review meeting to expedite actions on its policy decisions to give a boost to the sea food industry.

Chief Secretary, G C Pati has assured the Seafood Exporters Association, Odisha Region to call for the review meeting to sort out the problems faced by the industry. Pati said this during his visit to few seafood processing units here on Saturday along with other officials and SEA office bearers.

Sea food exporters of Odisha are battling a host of bottlenecks like inadequate infrastructural support and high electricity tariff rates, leading to stagnation in the volume of exports.

Pati visited Teekay Marines Ltd, Falcon Marine Exports Ltd and Shimpo Seafoods Ltd in Patia, here. All these units are European Union [EU] approved and have modern individually quick frozen [IQF] facilities.

“The chief secretary evinced keen interest in value added products exported from Odisha and expressed his pleasure to know that one of the units is making ready to eat products. He was also happy over the fact that Odisha units are maintaining international level of hygienic standards and able to compete with the best in the world. He interacted with workers, managers and exporters and spent more than two hours in knowing the problems faced by the units”, SEA [Odisha], president Gorachand Mohanty told “Bizodisha.com”.

Pati advised that SEA should facilitate hand holding for small exporters to come up to these levels, actively involved in creation of export facilitation center, training facilities for value added products and expediting Seafood Park to have more value added plants, Mohanty added.

This is for the first time any chief secretary had officially visited the seafood processing plants.

“Reluctance of banks in the state to provide finance for shrimp culture, charging exorbitant power tariffs by various distribution companies from sea food processing units and collection of purchase fees and high-handedness of Regulated Market Committee were some of the major deterrents in the growth of sea food industry in Odisha,” Mohanty remarked.

Boasting of a coast line- 480 kilometer i.e 6% coast line of India, 24,000 square km of continental shelf- 24,000 Sq. Km (4.7%of India) and 6.73 lakh hectare of fresh water and 4.18 lakh hactre of brackish water, the state has the potential to produce processed sea food to the tune of 6.5 lakh metric ton per annum. But at present it produces only 30,000 MT only barely 6% of the total production in India.