FISHING ON SAKHALIN AND THE KURIL ISLANDS WAS UNDER THREAT OF CLOSURE

Fishermen of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands will face massive job loss and closure of fishing enterprises. Such conclusions were reached by the participants of the meeting held in the Sakhalin Regional Duma. The main threat was a new bill, the adoption of which the fishermen are waiting for in the fall.

We are talking about amendments that Moscow plans to make to the law "On Fisheries and conservation of aquatic biological Resources" as part of the second stage of investment quotas. One of the proposals made at the meeting was the idea to send a special appeal to the Speaker of the Federation Council. In it, regional deputies want to ask Valentina Matvienko for assistance in ensuring that the amendments are not adopted in their current form.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rosrybolovstvo, which submitted the bill in November 2021, assume that the winners of the auctions will be engaged in the implementation of useful investment projects. In particular, they should build fishing vessels and processing plants. Only after that, their owners will be able to get quotas for catching seafood.

The bill may contribute to the monopolization of the entire fishing industry, experts say.

Regional players will be deprived of quotas for the extraction of biological resources. In this case, the SME sector will be insolvent and will not be able to participate in auctions. In this case, more than 40 companies engaged in scallop extraction will be liquidated on Sakhalin alone. Thousands of fishermen are at risk of being thrown out on the street, having lost their jobs.

The bill assumes that 100% of hedgehog, scallop, trepang and trumpeter will be additionally withdrawn. Similar measures are planned for 20% of pollock, herring and halibut. The transition from the historical to the auction principle of the functioning of the market involves the sale of 50% of the quotas for crab production, where Sakhalin was the leader.

Of the 20 thousand tons that were assigned to the island's enterprises until recently, a little more than 10 thousand tons will remain.

Not only representatives of the Far East, but also other subjects of the Russian Federation oppose the second stage of reforming the fishing industry. Industry representatives suggest that before discussing amendments in the State Duma, at least send them to the governments of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation in order to establish feedback between the center and the regions.

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