Russian association of fishery businesses call to revise a 'fishing quotas per a keel' terms

The All-Russian Association of Fishing Industry, Businessmen and Exporters proposes revision of the state-approved programme of granting to fishing enterprises of investment quotas in exchange for placing newbuilding orders only with domestic shipyards. As German Zverev, President of the Association told journalists the current terms stipulate that if a shipyard misses contractual deadline, fishing enterprise will be deprived of quotas as well.

"There’s an issue to be addressed. A fisherman should not have troubles in case of failure to keep contractual deadline: the one who had invested money, spent money, should be awarded the quota. But in reality, firstly, if someone fails to keep the deadline, he (the fisherman) looses this quota, and secondly, he pays a fine to the state and he suffers losses for the investments he had made. This issue has not yet been regulated properly, " German Zverev was quoted as saying.

The association head specified that work is being done on this issue with the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia.

The Russian shipbuilders, Mr. Zverev says, are not experienced in building large-tonnage fishing vessels and placing orders for such ships with domestic shipyards entails a risk. There are cases of multi-month delays in newbuilds delivery, explained German Zverev.