GUNTUR: The reduction in the import duty of fish meal from 15 per cent to 5 per cent in the 2023-24 budget has brought cheer to aqua farmers in coastal Bapatla district.
With a vast coastline, the district is popularly known for quality shrimp production. As many as 17 hatcheries and 7 processing units are present, and over 80,000 tonnes of shrimp worth Rs 2,000 crore are produced annually in the region.
The increase in fish meal prices since 2020 had created a huge financial burden on the aqua farmers. With fish meal constituting 40 per cent of the total cost of production of shrimps, the increase in prices had directly impacted shrimp production.
The farmers bore losses during the Covid-19 pandemic as the prices of shrimp witnessed 40% downfall as exports to foreign countries were halted. The aqua farmers who took loans from local money vendors in order to buy quality medicines and fish meal suffered massive losses. This made them wary to continue shrimp production.
In such a time, the reduction in import taxes has beamed hope among the aqua farmers. “This will also prevent the incidence of juvenile fishing, which is used for fish meal in domestic production and will thereby improve our marine fish stock availability,” said farmers.
“However, it is very important to ensure that this tax reduction doesn’t only benefit the manufacturing companies but the farmers as well,” they opined. “We are expecting that with the reduction in taxes, the prices of raw materials will also decrease, and thereby we can get a fish meal at reasonable prices”, said Suresh, an aqua farmer in Bapatla. With this, the production cost can reduce and become affordable, he added.