E-SANTA Marketplace

The Union Commerce and Industry Minister recently virtually inaugurated e-SANTA.

About e-SANTA:

• e-SANTA stands for Electronic Solution for Augmenting NaCSA farmer’s trade in Aquaculture.
• e-SANTA is an electronic marketplace providing a platform to connect aqua farmers and buyers.
• The platform will also act as an alternative marketing tool between farmers & buyers by eliminating middlemen.

Benefits of e-SANTA Platform:

• Enhances the life of Farmers: The platform will improve the lives & income of farmers by:
  1. Reducing Risk
  2. Awareness of Products & Markets
  3. Increase in Income
  4. Shielding Against Wrong Practice
  5. Ease of Processes.
• Promotes Transparency: The platform promotes transparency as the process is completely paperless and an end-to-end electronic trade between Farmers and exporters.
• Greater Control: The farmers have the freedom to list their products and quote their price. While the exporters have the freedom to list their requirements and also to choose the products based on their requirements.
• The platform is available in many languages which will help the local population.

About National Centre for Sustainable Aquaculture(NaCSA):

• National Centre for Sustainable Aquaculture is an extension arm of Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA), Ministry of Commerce & Industry Govt. of India.
• The objectives of NaCSA are to encourage and uplift the small and marginal farmers through the organization of clusters and maintaining Best Management Practices in shrimp culture.

PM Matsya Sampada Yojana

It is a flagship scheme for focused and sustainable development of the fisheries sector in the country as a part of the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan.

It aims to:

• Adopt ‘Cluster or Area-based Approaches’ and create fisheries clusters through backward and forward linkages.
• Focus especially on employment generation activities such as seaweed and ornamental fish cultivation.
• Address critical gaps in fish production and productivity, quality, technology, post-harvest infrastructure and management, modernisation and strengthening of the value chain, traceability, establishing a robust fisheries management framework and fishers’ welfare.
• Consolidate the achievements of the blue revolution and bring new interventions such as fishing vessel insurance, support for new/up-gradation of fishing vessels/boats, integrated aqua parks, e-trading/marketing, etc.

Targets:

• Enhance fish production by an additional 70 lakh tonnes and increase fisheries export earnings to Rs.1,00,000 crore by 2024-25.
• Double the incomes of fishers and fish farmers.
• Reduce post-harvest losses from 20-25% to about 10%.
• Generate an additional 55 lakhs of direct and indirect gainful employment opportunities in the fisheries sector and allied activities.

Budget and Time Period:

• An estimated investment of Rs. 20,050 crores for a period of 5 years from financial year (FY) 2020-21 to FY 2024-25 in all States/Union Territories.
• This investment is the highest ever in the fisheries sector yet.

Implementation: It will be implemented as an umbrella scheme with two separate components namely:

• Central Sector Scheme: The project cost will be borne by the Central government.
• Centrally Sponsored Scheme: All the sub-components/activities will be implemented by the States/UTs and the cost will be shared between Centre and State.