An economic study on structure and performance of marine fish marketing in Cuddalore district of Tamil Nadu

This study has been conducted in eight major coastal villages in Cuddalore district to study the structure and performance of domestic fish marketing and to estimate the seasonal variation of fish price and landings. The Gini concentration ratio of 0.34 using cumulative frequency distribution reveals that the domestic market structure for fish is “slightly concentrated oligopolistic and showed that domestic trade of fish is in the hands of few large traders. The linear regression analysis on influence of factors on average price of fish indicated that the costs on ice and wastage, transport, loading & unloading and marketing margin were the significant operations for deciding the price of fish. The behaviour of retail price and quantity of fish supplied to retail outlet showed that there is a decline in supply over the period (2006–11) and that is being reflected in prices of all categories of fish. The seasonal variation on quantity and price proves that the percentage of deviation is found to be more in quantity of fish (21.84 per cent) supplied than the price (10.45 per cent).