Fisheries Corporation in the pipeline

Hyderabad: As part of its efforts to develop and promote a profitable and long-term commercial fisheries system, the State government is mulling to come up with a Fisheries Corporation.

The proposed corporation will handle the entire operations related to development of fisheries and marketing.

According to officials of Fisheries Department, Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao asked them to prepare a ‘feasibility’ report of setting up a corporation so that the fisheries could generate huge profits besides reaching self-sustenance.

Currently, the government feels that the Telangana State Fishermen Cooperative Societies Federation has been reduced to running societies throughout the State.

If the corporation is set up, it will be able to cover everything which is related to fisheries. In the undivided Andhra Pradesh Fisheries Corporation was functioning effectively.

But it was later converted into a federation and since then it has been reduced to managing societies.

Now that the State government is directly involving itself in programmes like ‘fingerling distribution’ and their release worth several crores of rupees into water bodies post-monsoon, it feels that a corporation would be beneficial.

Corporation is a single entity under Companies Act, while federation is a cooperative body.

“If the government decides to come up with a corporation, it has to be registered under Companies Act of Section 25 and it shall run under the motto of ‘no loss no profit’.

The corporation would be headed by a chairman, who could be an official or public representative,” a senior official said.

The government also proposes to create a revolving fund in the next year’s budget (2017-18) so that it can help till the proposed corporation generates profits on its own.

“The current federation has failed to function like dairy federation, by providing technical input and market the produce. But if the corporation comes into being, it will have much bigger role to play,” the sources said.

It may be recalled that during the recent Assembly debate Chandrashekar Rao also expressed similar views and said that Fisheries Corporation would help in fishermen getting remunerative prices without middlemen and would also help them to export fish.