Abstract:
Sri Lankan seafood offers a variety of products to the international market contributing 2.2% to
the Sri Lankan total merchandise exports. Non-tariff measures (NTMs) bring numerous
difficulties to access to the international seafood market and the most of companies in the
seafood industry have to encounter with these NTMs. This study aims to unravel the present
status of technical measures applied on fish and fishery products export in Sri Lanka which
would be useful for the seafood exporting companies with wider potentials. Out of seventy fish
and fishery product exporting companies registered in the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic
Resources (DFAR), 30 companies were selected using simple random sampling technique. Pre tested questionnaire survey (n=30), key informant discussions (n=4) with the National
Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA), the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquatic
Resources Development (MFARD), and Export Development Board (EDB) officers were
conducted for primary data collection. Secondary data were collected from reports and records
of DFAR and EDB, research and survey reports published by NARA and MFARD and the
international database as Trade map. Majorly Sri Lanka exports fish and fishery products to 15
countries. EU countries have imposed the highest frequency of technical measures on Sri Lanka
and the second is USA while the highest frequency of technical measures are required for Tuna.
Mostly required types of technical measures are health certificate (55%), ISO 22,000 (50%),
histamine test (36%) and heavy metal test (32%). The average cost range for the procedural fee
and the annual renew fee of certificates are 600,000 – 90,000 and 130,000 – 45,000 respectively
while the average annual cost range for tests is 172,000 – 18,000. Pre-shipment Inspection (PSI)
is done by import companies especially at harbours as weighing and checking labels. The main
difficulty that exporters face is unaffordable high cost of certificates and tests. According to 98%
of companies, the places to conduct tests are not enough and appropriate, therefore long queue
and delaying to do tests decrease the profit margin. Although tariff barriers lessen due to free
trade, NTMs hinder the export process specially shrink profit from western sea food market.