A Study on Marketing Cost, Margin, Price Spread and Efficiency of Fish Marketing in Unregulated Fish Markets in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir,

Abstract

Fish marketing in Srinagar city of Jammu and Kashmir unlike any other city of India is highly unorganised and lack basic infrastructure. There is lack of species diversity in the market and the locally grown high value Trout fish has not made way into the local market and are sold at farm gate price. In this study an attempt was made to understand the marketing problems in Kashmir. It was found that there was only one wholesale market at Chattabal and very few retailers who own proper marketing retail outlets, rest all sell fish on footpath at different locations in the city hence they are categorised as vendor by the author to make the study simple. The wholesale and retail markets are dominated purely by men, while vendors were solely women and all the vendors were illiterate. Analysis of investment in fixed inventories incurred by different market intermediaries found Rs.36600, Rs.18573.33 and Rs.2989 were incurred by wholesaler, retailer and vendor, respectively. Retailer incurred the highest marketing cost of Rs.10.57/Kg followed by wholesaler and vendors with Rs.6.76/Kg and Rs.5.33/kg, respectively. Salary to permanent labour was the largest share for both wholesaler and retailer which accounted 46.12 and 44.28 percent to the total cost, respectively which indicate high cost of human labour in the valley. There exist three marketing channels and the channel- 3 was most efficient with marketing efficiency of 36.06 which was a form of direct marketing. The constraints analysis found that lack of marketing facility and high transportation was the most severe constraints faced by all the intermediaries. In order to reduce the marketing cost marketing intermediaries need to deal in bulk to achieve economies of scale and there is need to establish modern fish market in the valley which does not exit at present.