Govt delegation visits Japan to settle shrimp issue

Indian shrimp exporters in Odisha and West Bengal in particular have had trouble performing shipments to Japan for over a month. Now they are hoping an official delegation visiting Japan will resolve the issue.

As a result of the meeting convened by the union Commerce Ministry on 27 August, Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) Chairperson Leena Nair and the director of the Export Inspection Council, S K Saxena, travelled to Japan, where they are staying until this weekend.

Exports to Japan hit a virtual standstill six to eight weeks ago and, according to T R Patnaik, chairperson of Falcon Marine Exports Ltd, exporters are not in a position to take risks.
The entrepreneur considers they had no prior information before the implementation of unexpected testing for antioxidants, including ethoxyquin, in the shrimp shipments to the Japanese market.

Japanese health authorities suddenly reduced the ethoxyquin content in shrimp to 0.01 ppm without informing the Indian Government or exporters, Xinhua reports.

So far, Japan has rejected 131 consignments coming from India.

Exporters in the eastern region are the ones suffering from this change the most, as about 60 per cent of the black tiger shrimp raised here was usually sold to Japan. Patnaik said that at least 150 containers were ready to go, making the lack of a place to export them a huge loss.

If India’s government does not act immediately, marine exports will be in dire straits, he added.

One outcome of this conundrum is a big drop in the price of shrimp across the board, down 25-35 per cent over about three weeks.

During the April–June period in general, the country has suffered a serious setback on its exports of marine products, as they have dropped to 131,000 tonnes worth INR 27 billion (USD 485.6 million) against 165,000 tonnes valued at INR 28.7 billion (USD 516.2 million) in the same period the previous year. Japan is usually the fourth-largest importer in terms of volume, and in 2011-2012 (1 April, 2011-31 March, 2012), it imported 85,800 tonnes of marine products worth INR 2.14 billion (USD 38.5 million).

Anwar Hashim, a leading exporter and former president of the Seafood Exporters Association of India (SEAI), explained that the infection of ethoxyquin in seafood occurred through the fish meal used in shrimp farms.

As far as the market, he elaborated that the European and American ones are also showing weaker demand, in this case due to economic disturbances. Indian exporters are thus worried, since the markets of America, Europe and Japan have a combined share of 55 per cent of all seafood exported from India.

In the year 2011-2012, the total export was 862,021 tonnes worth INR 16.6 billion (USD 38.5 million). The cumulative import of Europe, Japan and the US totalled 308,375 tonnes worth INR 8.9 billion (USD 160.1 million). These figures indicate that even a marginal fall in sales to these countries would substantially dent the Indian seafood export sector.