First international ornamental fishing market coming up in Kolkata

Kolkata, June 28 (UNI) With a view to jacking up export of fish, the West Bengal government will set up the country's first international market for ornamental fishes and create a major fishing harbour near the sandheads in the Bay of Bengal by next year with central assistance.

State Fisheries Minister Kiranmoy Nanda told newspersons here today after addressing members of the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce and Industry(BNCCI) on the government policy on Pisciculture that the state, enjoying undisputed leadership both in productivy and consumption of fish for the past 15 years now, had already set up a world record of sorts in both categories.

Till last year the annual consumtion of fish in West Bengal was to the tune of more than 1.4 million ton, the highest in the world, while the total annual production was about 1.48 million as the entire additional volume was exported to different countries, he said.

Last year alone the state had exported shrimps, prawns and a number of various other varieties of fish to the tune of Rs 600 crore to different countries recording about 15 per cent growth from the previous year, Mr Nanda said.

Referring to his plan for setting up the country's first state-of- the-art international ornamental fishing market here to cater to the increasing global demand for such categories of fishes, Mr Nanda said for this purpose he had already identified about five acre of government land on the banks of the Hooghly and urged the Chief Minister for its immediate allocation to his department.

The international market would come up within a year of the allocation of land, the Minister said adding preparations were also in full swing for setting up a major fishing harbour at Petan island, situated about 60 km from the sandheads and about 250 km from here, at a cost of more than Rs 25 crore with Central assistance.

When come up, expectedly by next year, the entire volume of export of fish would be handled from the Petan harbour, Mr Nanda said.

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