New Delhi: The Andhra Pradesh Government, with a view to increasing the income level of aqua farmers and facilitating the supply of fresh seafood to consumers, has set a target to improve the domestic per capita consumption of fish and other seafood from the present 8.07 kg to 24 kg by 2024-25.

To achieve the mission, it has proposed to utilise 30 per cent of the fish production of Andhra Pradesh. As many as 26 aqua hubs and thousands of retail outlets will be set up in the State as part of the plan. To avoid distress sale of aqua produce, the government is providing support to entrepreneurs to set up 10 processing and 23 pre-processing units in the State with a project cost of Rs 546.91 crore.

The government is developing marine infrastructure by construction of fish landing centres. It is also promoting deep-sea fisheries, open sea cage culture and seaweed culture. Aqua zonation for area expansion and promotion of innovative technologies like nursery management, innovative technologies like RAS and Biofloc technologies, stocking advanced fish seed fingerlings in all potential inland water bodies are expected to help improve aqua culture fortunes in the State.

The government data showed that in 2022-23, Andhra Pradesh produced 37.18 lakh tonnes of fish and prawn by December 2022 against the target of 52.53 lakh tonnes.

The State government, which enacted different laws for promotion of aquaculture like the AP State Aquaculture Development Authority Act, AP Fish Feed (Quality Control) (Amendment) Act 2020, AP Fisheries University Act, 2020, has now come up with different schemes like diesel oil subsidy, relief to marine fisher during the annual ban and fisheries scheme.

The Centre under the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, has sanctioned 19 projects with a total project cost of Rs 503.77 crore in 2021-22. /BI/