DHAKA: Shrimp farmers are offloading their produce on the domestic market in a desperate attempt to recover production costs in the wake of slumping prices and weakening demand in developed economies.
Exporters pay Tk 330 at most for per kilogram of small to medium-sized shrimps, whereas the traders, who market the fish in cities, offer Tk 350 to Tk 375 for the same, said Shoyeb Mahmud, general manager of Jahanabad Seafood Ltd.
Historically an expensive item for local consumers, the black tiger shrimp has found a market here in recent times thanks to rising purchasing power.
The increased buying capacity is providing a protection to farmers, given the poor demand abroad, Mahmud said.
Even then, it would not be enough to recover the investment, said Atiar Rahman, a black tiger grower at Rampal, Bagerhat, one of the main shrimp farming regions. “The situation is very bad this year.”
The prices that the shrimp growers are getting this year are almost half of what they got a year earlier, he said.
“None of us will be able to recover the production costs at the prices that we are getting wherever we sell,” said Rahman, who have already incurred losses for disease attacks in his farm.
The export prices of larger black tiger shrimps, the major frozen food item for the European market, have slumped to $5-$5.50 a pound from upwards of $9.2 per pound in the first quarter of the fiscal year, exporters said.
Prices declined during November and December compared with September last year as a result of poor demand from the US, the EU and Japan, said GLOBEFISH, a unit of UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, in its market reports on shrimp in March.
The trend persisted into January this year, it said.
A host of factors — increased supplies of vannamei shrimps from Ecuador, India, Vietnam and Indonesia to the EU, large inventories in the US, depreciation of the euro and Russian ruble — affected shrimp prices, according to the report.
Processors said the demand for small to medium-sized shrimps has fallen at a higher rate than for the large-sized ones.
Export receipts from shrimps in the first ten months of the fiscal year fell 3.6 percent year-on-year to $440.50 million, according to Export Promotion Bureau.
