PIB TrackerSeafood exports hit record ₹72,326 crore
India's FY26 marine-product exports touched an all-time high, led by frozen shrimp, as a Commerce–Fisheries review meeting set the next push for value addition and traceability.
What happened
- On 14 May 2026 in New Delhi, the Commerce & Industry Minister (Piyush Goyal) and the Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying (Rajiv Ranjan Singh) co-chaired a meeting on fisheries export promotion, focused on scheme convergence, value addition, and export strategies — including for inland fisheries.
- The meeting recorded that India's seafood exports reached an all-time high of ₹72,325.82 crore (US$8.28 billion) across 19.32 lakh metric tonnes in FY 2025-26.
- This is up sharply from ₹62,408 crore (US$7.45 billion) and 16.98 lakh MT in FY 2024-25 — a rise in both value and volume.
- Frozen shrimp was the single biggest driver at ₹47,973.13 crore (US$5.51 billion), contributing over two-thirds of total export earnings.
- The Department of Fisheries reported having notified 34 fisheries production and processing clusters, and pressed the goal of at least one processing plant per coastal district.
- The agenda flagged deeper presence in Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs), a bigger MPEDA/EIC footprint in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep (for tuna), and recent enabling rules for deep-sea and high-seas fishing.
Background & context
India is one of the world's largest producers and exporters of fish and fish products, and the marine-export business is the responsibility of a specific institutional chain rather than a single agency. The lead export-promotion body is the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) — a statutory authority set up in 1972 under the MPEDA Act, 1972, headquartered at Kochi, and working under the Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce & Industry. MPEDA registers exporters, sets quality and packaging standards, runs market-development and branding work, and certifies aquaculture farms.
Production, inland fisheries and aquaculture development, on the other hand, sit with the Department of Fisheries under the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying — which is why this particular review was co-chaired by both the Commerce and the Fisheries ministers. The two arms meet at the export gate: Fisheries grows and lands the catch, Commerce (through MPEDA) sells it abroad. The release names the Secretary, Department of Fisheries as Dr. Abhilaksh Likhi.
The umbrella scheme that funds the sector's modernisation is the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY), launched in 2020 to develop fisheries in a sustainable, responsible and inclusive manner, with a sub-scheme later added as the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Kisan Samridhi Sah-Yojana (PM-MKSSY) for formalisation and access to finance. The fisheries development financing facility, the Fisheries and Aquaculture Infrastructure Development Fund (FIDF), and the cluster approach noted in this release all feed into the same modernisation push: move India up the value chain from raw frozen exports toward processed, traceable, branded product.
A second strand of context is regulatory. To keep market access in demanding buyers (the United States, the European Union, Japan), India must satisfy sustainability and food-safety conditions. The release cites marine mammal comparability approval from the US (a clearance that exporting nations need under US marine-mammal protection rules), the mandatory use of Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) in shrimp trawling (a conservation requirement to prevent sea-turtle bycatch), and the new EEZ Rules and High Seas Guidelines, 2025 for sustainable deep-sea fishing. Alongside these, India has rolled out the National Traceability Framework for Fisheries and Aquaculture (2025) — a digital provenance system so a consignment can be tracked from farm/vessel to export, which is increasingly a precondition for premium markets.
It helps to see how the named bodies divide the work, because UPSC frequently tests the "which body does what" pairing. MPEDA handles export promotion, registration and quality standards for the marine trade; the Export Inspection Council (EIC) — set up under the Export (Quality Control and Inspection) Act, 1963 — issues the health certification that accompanies consignments to regulated markets; the National Fisheries Development Board (NFDB) drives production-side development and is an autonomous body under the Department of Fisheries at Hyderabad; the Coastal Aquaculture Authority (CAA) regulates and registers coastal aquaculture farms to keep shrimp and other brackish-water farming environmentally compliant; and the Fishery Survey of India (FSI) surveys marine fishery resources, including the deeper waters of the Exclusive Economic Zone. The Exclusive Economic Zone itself is the maritime belt extending up to 200 nautical miles from the baseline, within which a coastal State has sovereign rights over living and non-living resources — the legal space the 2025 EEZ Rules seek to open for organised, sustainable Indian deep-sea fishing rather than leaving it under-exploited.
For the products themselves, the export basket is dominated by frozen shrimp, but it also includes frozen fish, frozen squid and cuttlefish, dried items, live and chilled product, and surimi and surimi analogue. India's shrimp output is led by the farmed Vannamei (Pacific white shrimp) and the native black tiger shrimp, with Andhra Pradesh the leading shrimp-producing State, followed by other coastal States such as Gujarat, West Bengal, Odisha and Tamil Nadu. The principal end-markets for Indian marine products are the United States, China, the European Union, Japan and South-East Asia, which is precisely why the diversification and value-addition agenda in this review matters — concentration in one product and a few buyers is the structural vulnerability behind the record.
For Prelims
- Headline number: FY 2025-26 seafood exports = ₹72,325.82 crore (US$8.28 bn) and 19.32 lakh MT — an all-time high.
- Year-on-year: up from ₹62,408 cr (US$7.45 bn) and 16.98 lakh MT in FY 2024-25 — both value and volume rose.
- Top item: frozen shrimp = ₹47,973.13 cr (US$5.51 bn), more than two-thirds of earnings — India's single largest seafood export item.
- MPEDA: Marine Products Export Development Authority — statutory body (MPEDA Act, 1972), HQ Kochi, under the Ministry of Commerce & Industry — the nodal export-promotion agency.
- Allied bodies: NFDB (National Fisheries Development Board, an autonomous body under the Department of Fisheries, HQ Hyderabad) for production-side development; Coastal Aquaculture Authority (CAA) regulating coastal aquaculture; EIC (Export Inspection Council) for quality certification; FSI (Fishery Survey of India) for resource survey.
- Infrastructure: 34 fisheries production and processing clusters notified; goal of at least one processing plant per coastal district.
- Sustainability instruments: National Traceability Framework for Fisheries and Aquaculture (2025); Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) in shrimp trawling; EEZ Rules and High Seas Guidelines, 2025; US marine-mammal comparability approval.
- Special focus geographies: Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep, flagged for tuna potential; deeper engagement with RFMOs (Regional Fisheries Management Organisations) for high-seas access.
- Umbrella scheme: Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY), launched 2020, is the flagship financing vehicle for the sector.
- Proposed support: Government is exploring a dedicated Production-Linked Incentive (PLI)-type scheme to grow the exporter base from roughly 1,200 to about 5,000 firms; a "Chintan Shivir" on the seafood roadmap is planned at Visakhapatnam.
Why it matters
Marine products are one of India's most valuable agri-export categories and a large rural-coastal livelihood base — millions of fishers, aquaculture farmers, processing-plant workers and exporters depend on the trade. A record export figure signals resilience, but the release itself frames the harder problem: India remains heavily dependent on a single low-value-added product (frozen shrimp) sold to a narrow set of markets, which is a concentration risk if any buyer tightens sanitary, environmental or anti-dumping conditions. The policy response named here — value addition, district-level processing plants, traceability, a wider exporter base, and tuna diversification in the islands — is aimed squarely at moving up the value chain and spreading risk. It addresses the structural weakness of exporting raw commodity at the bottom of the value ladder while higher margins are captured by processors and brand owners abroad.