EPB suggests raising cash incentive on shrimp export

A government agency has suggested increasing the cash incentives on exports of frozen shrimps and other fish to help boost fish production and export earnings.
The Export Promotion bureau (EPB) sent the recommendation to the Ministry of Commerce (MoC) last week in line with the latter's directive.
In its recommendation, the EPB proposed that the rates of cash incentives should be 20 per cent and 15 per cent on exports of ready-to-eat or about ready-to-eat fish and frozen shrimp respectively.
It also suggested providing 15 per cent and 10 per cent cash incentives on export of live crab and eel and other fish.
The frozen fish industry currently gets 7.0 -10 per cent cash incentives on shrimp exports and 2.0-5.0 per cent on other fish exports.
The state agency thinks that the rate of cash incentives for frozen shrimp and all other fishes, including live fish, live crab and eel, should be increased like other agriculture sectors to help boost the production and export earnings.
Contacted, EPB Vice Chairman and CEO AHM Ahsan said, "We have sent our opinion to the commerce ministry for increasing the rate of cash incentive on export of frozen shrimp and other fish to help boost export earnings from this sectors."
According to the Bangladesh Frozen Foods Exporters Association data, the total production capacity of their units is 0.4 million tonnes, but they can utilise only 30,000-tonne capacity currently due to the higher overhead cost, shortage of raw materials and others reasons.
Some 66 countries are farming vannamei variety of shrimp. The price of vannamei variety is less than that of the shrimp produced in Bangladesh.
The vannamei variety meets more than 77 per cent of the global demand for shrimp.
The promising frozen food sector is now bearing the brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic, industry insiders said. Export business of the functioning factories is being hampered due to the spread of the deadly virus across the world, industry insiders said.
The demand for luxury food items, especially frozen shrimp and fish, has decreased globally and including prices of products, have also reduced, they explained.
The volume of fishes exports would increase three times annually if the country can export surplus fishes of about 0.6 million tonnes, according to the EPB.
EPB explained that fishermen who are involved in direct fishing do not get formal financing facility. They only get financing from the exporters concerned during fishing season.
Sector insiders claimed that the volume of export will increase if the rate of cash incentives is raised, according to the EPB letter.
Bangladesh earned $482.87 million from shrimp export in fiscal year (FY) 2015-16, $463.12 million in FY 2017, $426.09 million in FY 2018, $404.06 million in FY 2019 and US$ 357.50 million in FY 2020.
The overall shipment of frozen fish also declined to around U$500.40 million in FY 2019 from $507.84 million in 2018.
Currently, around 10 million people are involved in fishing and processing of the sector.

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