VIJAYAWADA: The ninth Aqua Empowerment Committee meeting was held under the chairmanship of Minister for Forest and Environment Peddireddy Ramachandra Reddy at his camp office, here on Tuesday.
The panel, comprising Education Minister Botcha Satyanarayana, Fisheries Minister Seediri Appalaraju, AP State Aquaculture Development Authority vice-chairman Vaddi Raghuram, highlighted that the State government was prioritising all issues related to the aqua sector in a bid to further develop it.
They advised officials to monitor market rates regularly so that relevant steps can be taken to avoid losses to aqua farmers.
“Meetings should be conducted with farmers, managements of processing units and exporters for stabilising the prices of aqua products,” the committee members told the officials. Officials of fisheries department explained the steps being taken to control the prices of seed and feed, to provide better rate to the aqua products and also to increase usage of aqua products.
They noted that the announcement of rates of aqua products through RBKs had prevented aqua farmers falling prey to middlemen.
“Aqua farmers in the State are getting Rs 245 for hundred-count shrimp, the highest compared to Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Odisha,” the officials pointed out. Stating that 43,548 electricity connections had been set up for aqua farming, the officials said the government incurred Rs 513 crore as subsidy for these connections.
Highlighting that the State government was establishing 2,259 aqua hubs across the State, the officials said 1,962 of them are already functioning and 657 MT of aqua products were sold through these hubs.