Amod Ashok Salgaonkar, Co-founder & Chief Operating Officer of A2S2 Enterprises was called as a Special Speaker
Department of Fisheries, Government of Maharashtra (Region Nashik) organised a special lecture for its department officials on “International Trade of Tilapia & Status of India” on 14 December.
Amod Ashok Salgaonkar, Co-founder & Chief Operating Officer of A2S2 Enterprises, as a Special Speaker for the said event, gave a wide understanding of global overview of tilapia fish production, international trade of tilapia, India’s export to the world in tilapia products, domestic scenario of tilapia business, important aspects of entering in major international market of tilapia. Chosen selected entrepreneurs from the region also attended the session.
“Government of India, Department of Fisheries has given priority importance to scale the tilapia production in a country and through PMMSY (Pradhan Mantri Matysa Sampada Yojana) flagship scheme, we are doing everything under our control to support all the stakeholders involved in fisheries & aquaculture sector of Maharashtra to boost the segment” said Dr Atul Patne, Commissioner & Secretary (Additional Charge) for Department of Fisheries, Government of Maharashtra.
S P Wategaonkar, Deputy Commissioner of Fisheries, Nashik Region (Maharashtra State) mentioned, “We want to let all our officers understand the latest trends in tilapia business so that they can adopt necessary measures to help entrepreneurs, farmers, processors involved in the business to grow further. We have initiated arranging such sessions to be more equipped with industry knowledge & we will continue organising more such sessions as per requirement”
“Looking at the global nutritious food requirement with high protein at an affordable price, Tilapia is the strong potential candidate of animal fish food species which will become the game changer from fisheries & aquaculture stream in immediate next few years. The trend is particularly important when shrimp segment is tumbling globally & indication of implementing high resource tax on salmon industry in Norway (from January 2023) may impact global trade of these two important fish food species.”, explained Amod Ashok Salgaonkar.
Among the total world tilapia production of 6.88 million tonnes in 2018, farmed category contributed 87.6% & only 12.4% were produced from captured fisheries as per FAO data, while the global import trade shows a figure of $1.49 billion in 2018. China is the largest producer of tilapia in the world market. Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) & Worldfish led study for Indian market in 2022 estimated production of tilapia in India at about 70,000 MT for the year 2020.
“UN Comtrade fetched data shows the export of Indian Tilapia to be more than 99.93% tilapia whole (fresh + frozen) form & negligible 0.07% contribution came from tilapia fillet (fresh + frozen) form for the export trade value of $32,69,000 USD in 2018. The total import trade of tilapia (from 27+ countries) in US market has been seen at $612 million for the period of Jan-Oct 2022. Having the logo of BAP from Global Seafood Alliance (GSA) is one of the important criteria to do more sales of tilapia products in US market whereas demand is also good for ASC certified seafood”, Salgaonkar added.