Tuna exports are slated to increase to 12 per cent of the country’s $4 billion marine exports by 2013, according to a perspective plan drawn up by the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA).

Releasing the Action Plan for the Development of Tuna Fisheries in the country, the Union Minister of State for Commerce, Mr. Jairam Ramesh, said that this would take Indian tuna exports to $500 million from the low of $29 million last year, or 0.1 per cent of the country’s total marine exports.

The major foray into tuna exports would also reduce the dependence on shrimp, which constituted 53 per cent of marine exports by value today. The Action Plan would also help Andaman & Nicobar Islands which has one third of the country’s tuna and constitute 50 per cent of the regions marine resources.

To start with 100 existing fishing vessels of the region would be provided with technology and converted into tuna long liners to exploit the bounteous resources of the Andaman sea. The other locations where the Action Plan would focus would be Vizag, Lakshadweep and Tuticorin, Mr. G. Mohan Kumar, Chairman of MPEDA, said.

The market for Indian seafood exports had been shifting from the West to the countries of the East, especially Japan and China in the recent past.

To augment these changing trends and to further tuna exports from the country, Mr. Jairam Ramesh said that an international air cargo terminal should be opened at Port Blair. He had already written to the authorities concerned in this regard.

Though India was a signatory to the 28-member Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, it was still to exercise its rights in this regard.

The Minister said that some other countries might be exploiting India’s inaction and augmenting their tuna exports to the international markets.

Highlighting the immense seafood resources and potential of the Andaman sea, Mr. Bhopinder Singh, Lt. Governor of Andaman & Nicobar, said that though the region had 30 per cent of the country’s marine resources, it had a fleet of one per cent of the country’s fishing vessels and that too mainly as traditional country crafts.

He promised all support to the Action Plan to develop tuna fisheries in the country, especially in the Andaman and Nicobar islands.