PMMSY Seaweed Culture Rafts

The Department of Fisheries, through the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY), provides support for setting up seaweed culture rafts along with their inputs. This falls under item 2.5 of the scheme's mariculture activity list.

Each raft carries a benchmarked unit cost of ₹0.015 lakh. For a general beneficiary, government assistance amounts to ₹0.006 lakh (₹600) per raft, while an SC/ST/Women beneficiary receives ₹0.009 lakh (₹900) per raft. A single member may claim assistance for up to 15 rafts, and a group or society faces an overall ceiling of 500 rafts. A society with 35 members operating at that ceiling can therefore be supported on a commercially meaningful scale.

Applications are routed through the State/UT Fisheries Department.

- Set up a fisher cooperative society or a women's self-help group, or use one that already exists, and keep a record of how many members it has - Work out a proposal for the number of rafts required, calculating at ₹0.015 lakh per raft unit, staying within the limits of 15 rafts per member and 500 rafts per society - Send the proposal, along with the society's registration papers and the member list, to the District or State Fisheries Officer under PMMSY - The State Fisheries Department assesses the proposal and grants sanction for it under the Annual Action Plan - Funds are disbursed once the rafts that have been deployed are verified

State and UT Fisheries Departments assess proposals for conformity with PMMSY activity norms and unit costs, rank them within the outlay fixed in the approved Annual Action Plan, and pass them on for sanction. Assistance is released only after the asset created has been physically verified.