Analytical Study on Indian Fisheries Sector: Trends in Trade Performance

The present study was conducted to examine the market wise and product wise growth, instability and direction of fish export from India. This study was based on secondary data on market wise and product-wise marine export in terms of quantity and value was collected from different sources like Marine Products Export Development Authority of India and Indiastat. The analytical tools like Markov Chain Analysis were employed to analyze the movement (direction) of export of fish over time, Compound Annual Growth Rate analysis was used to estimate the growth in export and Cuddy-Della Valle method was used to estimate the extent of instability in export of fish over a period of time. The findings reveals that, In 2018-19, South East Asia was the major importer of Indian fish in terms of quantity with 32.10 per cent and USA was the leading importer in terms of value with 34.81 per cent. Except China, growth in fish export of to all countries was positively significant. South East Asia has recorded a highest growth in fish export. Markets like USA, China and SEA were more instable markets for Indian fish products. Among these China was the most instable fish export market both in terms of quantity (42.38) and value (52.90). Japan, European Union and Middle East were the more stable international markets for India fish. Among these markets European Union was the least instable (more stable) market with instability index of 7.13 and 11.53 in terms of quantity and value. With respect to reliability of markets USA, European Union, China and South East Asia are the more loyal among importers of Indian fish as reflected by higher probability of 0.90, 0.87, 0.88 and 0.90 respectively. In 2018-19,among all fish products exported frozen shrimp was the leading product both in terms of quantity of 6,14,154 MT (44.10% tot total export) and value of Rs.31,801 crore (68.26% of total exported value). With respect to product wise growth, all items have shown significant positive growth but dried items have recorded a highest significant and positive growth of 14.40 per cent in terms of quantity and 19.43 per cent in terms of value.Frozen shrimp was the most instable exported fish product both in terms of quantity (31.55) and value (43.60) followed by dried items (29.65 in quantity and 26.63 in values).