National Fisheries Development Board and Fisheries Policy

Indian fisheries and aquaculture are important sectors of food production, \t \nproviding nutritional security to the food basket, contributing to the \t \nagricultural exports and engaging about fourteen million people in different \t \nactivities. With diverse resources ranging from deep seas to lakes in the \t \nmountains and more than 10% of the global biodiversity in terms of fish \t \nand shellfish species, the country has shown continuous and sustained \t \nincrements in fish production since independence. Constituting about 4.4% \t \nof the global fish production, the sector contributes to 1.07% of the GDP \t \nand 4.7% of the agricultural GDP. The total fish production of 6.4 million \t \nmetric tonnes presently has nearly 55% contribution from the inland sector \t \nand nearly the same from culture fisheries. Paradigm shifts in terms of \t \nincreasing contributions from inland sector and further from aquaculture \t \nare significant over the years. With high growth rates, the different facets \t \nof marine fisheries, coastal aquaculture, mariculture inland fisheries, \t \nfreshwater aquaculture and coldwater fisheries are increasingly being \t \ndiversified, contributing to food, health, economy, exports, employment \t \nand tourism of the country.