Bhubaneswar: Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik Wednesday launched ten ‘Fish on Wheel’ carts and inaugurated a dozen ‘Chilika Fresh’ outlets in the Bhubaneswar city.
Fishfed jointly with Datam Marketing has introduced the Fish on Wheel carts to serve dishes prepared from fish and prawns to the consumers in the city. In phased manner such carts will be introduced in other towns and cities of the state besides the tourist places.
Similarly, the Fishfed has entered into a joint venture with Falco Marine to open another 26 modern Chilika Fresh outlets in the city to sell fishes of Chilika lake. In the first phase, 12 outlets were opened on Wednesday. The remaining 14 outlets would be opened by December 2017. Fishfed has plans to open about 100 outlets in cities like Cuttack, Berhampur, Rourkela, Sambalpur, Bhadrak, Jeypore, Baripada and Bhawanipatna.
State agriculture minister Damodar Rout, food supply and cooperation minister Surya Narayan Patro, panchyatiraj minister Pradip Maharathy, tourism and culture minister Ashok Chandra Panda, Fishfed and Fiscofed chairman T Prasad Rao Dora, fishery and animal resources secretary Vishal Gagan fisheries director Bijayketan Upadhya, Bhubaneswar MP Prasanna Patsani, MLAs Priyadarshi Mishra and Bijaya Mohanty were present at the launching ceremony.
The state has set a target to become self sufficient in fish production in coming three years and achieve an export target of Rs20,000 crore per annum in next four years. Currently, the state is producing 6 lakh tonnes of fish per annum even while it has 480 km long coastaline and 10.94 lakh hectares of inland water body. Almost 80% of the people in the state are fish eaters.
