Blue economy means income from the sea. Be it export of marine creatures or trade through sea route. Modi government is expanding the scope of this Blue Revolution. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also presented this example in her budget speech on Thursday. After 2015, Modi government has made many announcements regarding this. It has also been beneficial. Now in the budget, Nirmala Sitharaman has increased the government expenditure in Blue Revolution.
Rs 2,025 crore were allocated for Blue Revolution in the 2023-24 budget, which has been increased to Rs 2,352 crore for 2024-25. It has also been announced to further strengthen the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana. Aquaculture will be better with this. Exports will double and employment opportunities will be created. It has also been announced to build 5 aqua parks in this year’s budget. Know how the Blue Revolution got a boost in the Modi government and brought about a big change.
How changes started appearing due to the announcement of Modi government: The Government of India started making many announcements seriously for the Blue Economy from 2015 itself. An example of how important this economy is for the government is found in the statement of Prime Minister Modi in March 2015. He had said, ‘The blue wheel in the national flag of India symbolizes the capabilities of the Blue Revolution.’ In the same year, the government also launched ‘Blue Revolution: Integrated Development and Management of Fisheries’.
Rs 3000 crore was allocated for this scheme. In 2018-19, ‘Fisheries and Aquaculture Infrastructure Development Fund’ was created for fish farming. Rs 7522.48 crore was released for the fund. With this money, financial concessions were given to state governments, union territory governments and the private sector. Its effect was also visible the next year, when an average annual increase of more than 7% was recorded in fish production.
Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada YojanaThe flagship ‘Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana’ was launched in the year 2020. This scheme is also mentioned in the recent budget of Nirmala Sitharaman. Its objective is to bring blue revolution in the country. To achieve the scheme target, the Central Government also made a huge investment of Rs 20,500 crore in the year 2020 in the scheme. This scheme has been implemented in all the states and union territories for five years from 2020 to 2025.
The result of all these schemes of the Government of India was that in 2019-20, fish production reached a record level of 141.64 lakh metric tonnes. Not only this, despite various problems of the Covid-19 pandemic, the sector had achieved all-time high exports. According to government data, India had exported marine products worth $7165 million during April-2021 to February 2022.
The central government hopes that the blue economy will emerge as an important part of India’s economy in the coming years. The contribution of India’s blue economy to the GDP in 2016 was 4.1%. The national policy aims to increase this figure to double digits by 2047.
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