The Federal Agency for Fishery of Russia (Rosrybolovstvo) has developed normative acts establishing the procedure of allocation of quotas for investment purposes (construction of fishing vessels and factory ships) and the requirements for investment projects. According to the updated law on fisheries, Rosrybolovstvo offers to allocate for these purposes up to 20% of the quotas, the agency said.
Draft regulations for the quota allocation procedure have been discussed at the meeting with Deputy Minister of Agriculture, the head of Federal Agency for Fishery Ilya Shestakov. The meeting was attended by the heads of industry associations and fishing enterprises.
"The developed draft regulations are to clearly define the criteria for selection of investment projects in the field of fisheries and create a transparent and competitive procedures for such a selection", Ilya Shestakov was quoted as saying.
Initially several approaches have been considered: from complete freedom for investor to choose options to strict regulation, including the rigid standards for projects of investment facilities.
"As a result, we opted for a compromise version, to identify basic shapes of facilities and at the same time offer the investors flexibility in their implementation depending on commercial, operational and technological aspects", said the Rosrybolovstvo head.
Requirements for facilities investment are formed taking into account the need to ensure the maximum economic benefit from the measures taken. These are an increase in production of products with high added value, growth of deliveries to the domestic market of high-quality and the available products, such as IQF fillets.
Another key objective is to update the fixed assets due to the rapidly growing security risks. State support will be directed to where the fleet replacement is required, first of all, large vessels for the Far East, and the medium-tonnage vessels for the Northern region.
It was also noted that the law provides for other mechanisms of state support for the fishing industry. For example, the construction of small tonnage vessels will be supported by the allocation of additional quotas for the development of coastal fisheries.
Following the discussion, some proposals and clarifications will be included in the draft regulations offered by the industry participants. Then the documents will be submitted for the interagency approval. In early autumn, the Ministry of Agriculture plans to hold a final working group meeting on improvement of legislation to discuss draft regulations before submitting it to the federal government.