New Delhi: In order to connect the country’s aqua farmers and fishermen with buyers and exporters, the government on Tuesday launched an e-trading platform called e-SANTA, which will allow buyers to purchase directly from the sellers with the ability to trace the origin of a product, which is an important factor in global trade.
The e-SANTA portal stands for Electronic Solution for Augmenting NaCSA farmers' Trade in Aquaculture. Its nodal body, the National Centre for Sustainable Aquaculture (NaCSA) is a part of Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) under the ministry of commerce and industry.
“The e-SANTA will raise income, lifestyle, self-reliance, quality levels, traceability, and provide new options for our aqua farmers,” said Piyush Goyal, commerce and industries minister.
Goyal said that the platform will change the traditional way of doing business from a word of mouth basis to become more formalised and legally binding.
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The minister said the new e-trading platform will raise the farmers’ income by reducing risk, create awareness about the products and markets, shield against wrong practices and ensure ease of process in trade and export of aqua and marine products from the country.
Goyal said new tool bridge the divide between buyers and sellers and eliminate the intermediaries from the market.
It will revolutionize traditional aqua farming by providing cashless, contactless and paperless electronic trade platform between farmers and exporters.
“The e-SANTA can become a tool to collectively advertise the kind of products the buyers, fishermen & fish producing organisations are harvesting, so people in India and internationally can know what is available. It can become an auction platform in future,” he said.
The Platform is available in many languages, which will help the local population.
Goyal said that farmers were facing monopoly and exploitation, exporters were facing inconsistency and quality gaps in the products purchased, and traceability of aqua products was a big issue in international trade which will change with the use of this platform.