Translated material
Administrative biological resource
Rosrybolovstvo will set fishing quotas until 2019
On October 21, Rosrybolovstvo will announce a list of all quotas for catching aquatic biological resources approved for distribution until 2019, and on November 12, the lucky ones will learn the volumes allowed for production. As the head of the department, Andrei Krainy, said yesterday, fewer applications have already been submitted than there are valid licenses. But the reduction in the number of companies, in his opinion, is positive - this is due to the consolidation of fishermen. And the head of the government commission on issues of the fishery complex, First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov asked to take a closer look at the selection process and not allow any “swindlers and crooks” to access the fish wealth.“It is necessary to exclude any abuses and corruption in the distribution of quotas,” Mr. Zubkov sternly pointed out, opening a meeting of the government commission on Wednesday. “Now walkers will flock to you, mostly honest people, but there will be plenty of swindlers and crooks - don’t let them get within range of a cannon shot.” “The walkers are already walking, but if only the fishermen were walking,” Mr. Extreme complained ironically. “Respected people come and ask to take a “gentler” look at some company.” Still, there are bright sides. The head of Rosrybolovstvo seemed quite satisfied with how the work was going in accordance with the new fishing rules . The main innovations, we recall, are production quotas for a period of ten years and mandatory registration of catch in the Russian customs territory.
The main regulator now is the volume of total allowable catch (TAC), which is determined for each type of biological resource and for all basins. The environmental assessment is carried out by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Rostechnadzor, and Rosrybolovstvo distributes quotas for up to ten years. Thus, “an absolutely closed club of players is being formed; it is impossible to get into it in any other way,” says Mr. Krainy. He also considers the abolition of the maximum allowance for catching small fish to be a merit of the state: in particular, fishing for goby and anchovy will be freely permitted in the Azov Sea basin.
The new procedure for distributing production quotas among Russian fishermen will come into effect on January 1, 2009. Until October 20 of this year, the working group of Rosrybolovstvo will be working to check accepted applications for compliance with the requirements of the quota distribution rules. By October 27, quotas assigned to applicants must be calculated, and by November 12, Rosrybolovstvo must approve the distribution of quotas between fishermen.
The department received 1,557 applications, which is less than the number of licenses issued before 2009, of which there were over 1,700. This is due to the fact that many companies went bankrupt and because fishermen began to unite. Mr. Krainy firmly promised that quotas would not be allocated to fishing companies previously found to be systematically violating the law. And those who received quotas, but were caught violating the rules for catching and exporting biological resources, will not be fined; their right to a quota will simply be taken away, thereby depriving them of business for ten years.
Special attention will be paid to companies with foreign capital. Fishing is a strategic industry, and foreign investors must obtain permission from the government's Foreign Investment Commission to own a fishing business in Russia. It seems that this has somewhat scared off those interested, and now there is a massive exit of foreign shareholders from fishing companies. But Rosrybolovstvo suspects that the exit is only formal and potentially such companies may find themselves in violation of the new decree on registering all catch in Russian customs territory, so they will be subject to special control.
Most of all, Andrei Krainiy is concerned about two unresolved issues - the regulation of transshipment and transportation of industrial catch, as well as quotas for amateur fishermen. The first is necessary to “close the loophole” for “black poachers” who transship their catch on the high seas to foreign ships that have the right to enter the Russian zone, and thus avoid domestic customs and payment of fees. Rosrybolovstvo proposes issuing permits for transportation and thus eliminating the possibility of illegal catches from all sides.
The second is a subject of special concern to the head of Rosrybolovstvo. “We have 350 thousand professional fishermen and 20 million amateurs,” Mr. Krainy urged his colleagues to quickly adopt a resolution on issuing quotas for the latter for 20 years. “We make them poachers ourselves,” but they are “essentially respectable people,” lamented the head of Rosrybolovstvo. The last thing the journalists heard as they left the hall was Viktor Zubkov’s request to the head of Rosrybolovstvo to provide a list of “respected people” who are trying to interfere in the activities of the department. What the First Deputy Prime Minister will do with them remains a mystery.
After the meeting, Mr. Krainy said that based on the results of the ongoing Russian-Norwegian annual fishery commission, our fishermen may receive the right to double the fish catch in the Northern Basin (Barents and Norwegian Seas) - up to 500 thousand tons. The increase in the Russian quota is due to the lifting of the ban on capelin fishing in the Northern Basin, which was in force in recent years at the request of scientists, and also due to the fact that Russian fishermen did not select their quota in full for several years in a row.