LEADS AND LAGS IN INDIAN SEAFOOD EXPORTS

The present study analyzed the changing scenario of volume, value, principal markets and composition of seafood exports of India. The objective of the study was to estimate the compound growth rates, as well as the market concentration of Indian seafood exports. Analysis revealed that frozen shrimp continued to be the flagship product of Indian seafood exports (2004-2014) and South East Asia including China recorded the highest compound growth rate among the different principal markets of Indian seafood exports.  The Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI) (Table 1) revealed that Indian seafood exports enjoyed a high level of overall market concentration. The Markov's transitional probability matrix revealed that the frozen shrimp will be the mainstay of Indian seafood exports and both USA and South East Asia including China would remain a stable market. The matrix also revealed a minor shift of share of Japanese market to European Union (Table 2). Forecasted values indicated similar results as previously obtained. European Union and South East Asia were expected to improve their contributions to total value of Indian seafood exports substantially by 2020 (Table 3).