Agartala: Nov 21: As part of celebrations of the World Fisheries Day 2022, a workshop on Fisheries Infrastructure Development Fund was organized at the Shaheed Bhagat Singh Yuva Awas in Agartala on Monday.
The workshop was attended by large number of fish farmers as experts from the sector beside heads of various agencies involved with it discussed on how the state and central government has come up with various schemes and funds to promote scientific fish farming which is considered one of the most profitable activities and can also play a vital role in employment creation.The objectives of the workshop includes creation and modernization of capture and culture fisheries infrastructure, reduce post-harvest losses and improve domestic marketing facilities through infrastructure support, bridge the resource gap and facilitate completion of ongoing infrastructure projects.
Prem Kumar Reang, Tripura’s Minister of Fisheries, Binay Shankar Mishra, Principal Secretary, Department of Fisheries, Loken Das, General Manager, NABARD and MLA Dr. Dilip Das were present as guests in the workshop. On the day twenty best progressives fish farmers from across Tripura were felicitated and certificates were distributed among them so that they are motivated and seeing their success others are also encouraged to take the initiative which will lead the state towards self reliant in fish production. At present the per capita annual fish consumption of Tripura is above 26 kilograms while the local production is 19.46 Kg and remaining 6.79 Kg is fill by importing from Andhra Pradesh and neighbouring nation Bangladesh.
Fisheries is one of the priority sectors of the Tripura government which has been largely increasing its budget allocation for the sector.During the fiscal 2018-19 when the BJP-IPFT government came to power in Tripura the budget for fisheries was ₹60.97 Cr but in the current fiscal the budget has gone up to ₹126.48 Cr. Previous year on this day Tripura was awarded as the best performing state among the Northeastern Hilly States in the fishery sector and this year one of the fish farmer of the state is being awarded for his fish hatchery during a program at Swami Vivekanand Auditorium in Daman.
NABARD which find that fisheries have huge potential in Tripura has signed tripartite agreement along the state and central government. Along with state fisheries development, NABARD is also transferring modern technology beside training to the progressive fish farmers in-order to create island of excellence so that other farmers can be motivated so that they replicate those ideas and thus FPO’s can be formed which not only helps the farmers but also the state economy. Moreover, under rural infrastructure development fund, NABARD is also funding the fish farmers for construction of tanks for encouraging them for bio floc fish farming.Fisheries and Aquaculture Infrastructure Development Fund and National Fisheries Development Board which has been among the organisers of the workshop aims at achieving a sustainable growth of 8-9 per cent, in a move to augment the country’s fish production to the level of about 20 million tonnes by 2022-23.
