Bangla Matsya Utsab 2018 to begin today
The Bangla Matsya Utsav, also called Bengal Fish Festival, will be inaugurated today. It will continue till January 8, 2018.
The third edition of the fish festival is being held at Nalban Food Park on the northern outskirts of Kolkata. West Bengal Fisheries Development Corporation (WBFDC), part of the Bengal Government’s Fisheries Department, is organising the festival.
This time it is being organised as a national event. After the success that the state’s Fisheries Department achieved at the World Food India 2017 festival a few months back, be it in terms of the business agreements signed or the huge popularity of the stalls, this fish festival has achieved much more importance.
Here too, several memorandums of understanding (MoU) will be signed, among them with the governments of Jharkhand and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. During the World Food India fest, the government had received interest from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Government for tie-up for popular sea fishes like tuna, sardine and mackerel.
Other inaugurations include the State Government’s mobile-app based fish marketing service, mobile-based home delivery of fish on motorcycles and a fish processing unit at Nalban Food Park.
The government has been taking a lot of initiatives to develop fishery in Bengal – both inland and marine. New programmes and schemes are being routinely launched. High-quality exports are rapidly increasing, and the government is signing agreements for technical knowhow with various countries. As a result, livelihoods of fishing people and of everyone related to the fishing industry are being uplifted.
