Saudi Arabia’s National Fisheries Development Program – a Division of the Ministry of Environment, Water, and Agriculture – has predicted the country’s shrimp exports to Russia will increase more than 600 percent in 2022.
Program CEO Ali Al-Shaikhi told Zawya the anticipated increase in shrimp exports to Russia from the current 3,000 metric tons (MT) to 20,000 MT is driven by an uninterrupted surge in demand for the product in the Russian seafood market.
This shrimp export trade would be a major boost for Saudi Arabia, a member of Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf. The country has been keen on leveraging the country’s growing public private partnerships, especially in the aquaculture sector, to increase seafood production in the short to medium term.
Previously, Saudi Arabia made a foray into markets in Oman and Singapore, with the entry into the Russian shrimp market building on a fast-growing seafood export portfolio for the Middle East country’s aquaculture sector. The two countries first signed a memorandum of expanding trade in 2019, with shrimp comprising one of the most important parts of the agreement.
In September this year, Saudi Arabia announced it was backing the Al Jazer Shrimp farm in Al Wusta after sighing a Memorandum of Understanding with the Fisheries Development Oman (FDO).
The farm has annual capacity of 12,500 MT of Indian white shrimp, with FDO expected to invest at least OMR 44.5 million (EUR 102 million USD 115 million) in the project’s first phase, the Muscat Daily reported.
Previously, Saudi Arabia’s shrimp products found a new market in Singapore, with the latter country’s Trade and Industry minister Chan Chun Sing saying in November 2020 the shrimps have been sourced from the Middle East producing country “in a very price-competitive manner.”
Since 2015 Saudi Arabia’s seafood exports and imports have both been increasing, with the country exporting seafood products valued at an estimated USD 100 million (EUR 88.4 million), while USD 633.1 million (EUR 560 million) worth of seafood products were imported.
Saudi Arabia, an approved exporting country to the European Union, now has to compete for a share of the Russian shrimp market with other key shrimp producers such as Ecuador, Greenland and Vietnam. Russia is the top destination for shrimp exports outside the European Union, having imported an estimated 45,000 MT of raw shrimp and 3,500 MT of processed shrimp in the recent past.
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