Estimation of Demand for Different Fish Groups in Tripura

This paper has estimated the demand and income elasticity for different fish types in Tripura and has projected the demand of fish. Three-stage multiple budgeting framework of household was structured in simple way mitigating the drawback of limited sample size and aggregation problem. The coefficient of food and fish expenditure functions for urban, rural and overall Tripura have been found to be positive and significant, indicating that the response of food expenditure to income changes and fish expenditure to food budget changes are substantial. All the coefficients of specific fish consumption (local carps, local non-carps, inter-state non-carps and small weed fish) have been found to be significant, except for the coefficient of inter-state carps (IC) consumption function. Looking at the variability of income elasticities across the Choiced Fish Groups (CFGs), all CFGs have substantial importance with respect to income change, except inter-state carps (IC) which is likely to have no relation with the change in income basket for the consumers. The income elasticity of demand for local carps in Tripura has been found highest among all the CFGs and is expected to play a dominating role in meeting fish demand. Demand for the fish under the baseline scenario (considering base year 2004) is likely to grow at an annual rate of 3.38 per cent for the state and at the rate of 3.95 per cent and 2.00 per cent for urban and rural areas, respectively between 2004 and 2015. The demand for fish by 2015 has been projected as 80,153 Mt shared by 62,910 Mt of carps (local and inter-state) and 17,243 Mt of non-carps. The demand for local carps has been projected to be nearly 50 percent (40,624 Mt) of total projected demand of fish in 2015.