Govt starts platform to help aqua farmers

NEW DELHI: Government on Tuesday launched an e-commerce platform for marine products named e-SANTA, to connect aqua farmers and exporters by eliminating middlemen.

Launching the platform, trade minister Piyush Goyal said it will enable aqua farmers to get a better price and the exporters to directly purchase quality products from the farmers enhancing traceability, a key factor in international trade.

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e-SANTA stands for Electronic Solution for Augmenting NaCSA farmers' Trade in Aquaculture. National Centre for Sustainable Aquaculture (NaCSA) is an extension arm of Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) under the Ministry of Commerce & Industry.

Goyal said e-SANTA will change the life standards of our fishermen, bring in substantive improvements in their lives and also enhance India’s reputation in the global trade. “The platform will change the traditional way of carrying out business from a word of mouth basis to become more formalised and legally binding,” he added.

The platform can revolutionize traditional aqua farming by providing cashless, contactless and paperless electronic trade platform between farmers and exporters. “e-SANTA can become a tool to advertise collectively the kind of products the buyers, fishermen & fish producing organisations are harvesting, so people in India & internationally can know what is available & in the future, it can become an auction platform”, Goyal said. The platform is available in many regional languages which is expected to help the local population.

e-SANTA is an end-to-end electronic trade platform between aqua farmers and exporters. The aqua farmers have the freedom to list their produce and quote their price while the exporters have the freedom to list their requirements and also to choose the products based on their requirements such as desired size, location, harvest dates etc. This enables the farmers and buyers to have greater control over the trade and enables them to make informed decisions. The platform provides detailed specification of each product listing and it is backed by an end to end electronic payment system with NaCSA as an Escrow agent.