An Empirical Assessment of Seafood Export Performance and Competitiveness in Gujarat, India

Abstract

Gujarat with 11 maritime districts owns the longest coastline (1640 Km) and has the widest shelf area. The coastline of about 1640 km consists of 173 landing centers. The shelf area covers about 1, 64,000 sq.km, of which 64,800 sq.km falls in the depth range 0-60 m, which can be exploited by traditional as well as mechanized craft. Marine fish export stands Multibillion dollar industry where fisheries sector supporting 1 per cent in nation’s GDP. The present study analyses the growth, performance, trends, competitiveness of marine fish and fish product from Gujarat and India during 2001- 2014 using the parameters Viz., Exponential Growth Function, Export Competitiveness Index (XCI), Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA), Revealed Trade Advantage (RTA). XCI expresses the changes in market share of different products for seafood export in Gujarat which was indicating improvement in XCI (>1) over the years, hence it founds competitive in the export of seafood from Gujarat. An Indian seafood export depicts XCI greater than one throughout the study period. RCA was estimated for the confining efficiency, performance and competitive ability for the Gujarat seafood export and India’s seafood export. RCA value of India and Gujarat seafood export showed a fluctuating trend which may be due to the high dependency on wild capture rather than culture for the export. India reflects the strong competitive power in the export of seafood as it was greater than 1 to a large extent. RTA has estimated for Indian export experienced the value >1 during 2001-2015-16, which become possible due to the high RXA and fewer IMA from India made its trade advantage and growth positive and faster. With respect to current development trend of export from Gujarat and India, there is urgent need to focuses decline in marine catches and over- exploitation, conservation, diversity, and policy framing. There has still needed for further improvement which may encourage more trade, rural development and foreign exchange in near future.