Fisheries department head talks about achievements, shortcomings of Decree 67

He said that compared with previous policies that support the development of fisheries, the Decree 67 has many synchronous, comprehensive and strong support policies for the fisheries sector in general and the fishing industry in particular.

The most notable thing of the decree is to support the construction of new fishing vessels that have large capacity, being capable of long-term offshore operation, applying science and technology in exploitation and preservation of products after exploitation as well as giving priority to build new steel-hulled fishing vessels, he said.

The decree was promulgated on July 7, 2014, with the goal of urgently building a modern offshore fishing fleet to both develop the marine economy and support fishermen to go offshore for production, affirming and protecting the sovereignty of the sea and islands.

After seven years of implementation, the policies prescribed by the Government under the decree have become effective, meeting the aspirations of a large number of fishermen, he said.

The goal of modernization of fishing vessels has been initially achieved, the number of near-shore fishing vessels has decreased by 13.2 per cent, the number of offshore fishing vessels has increased by over 20 per cent and the number of fishing-vessel accidents has decreased significantly.

It has contributed to the protection of national security and sovereignty at sea, helping many production linkage models at sea being formed and developed.

The decree also contributes to investment and upgrading of 28 fishing ports, raising the volume of aquatic products through the port to 447,000 tonnes per year.

It also helps to build and upgrade 67 storm shelters with total mooring capacity increased by 37,400 ships; 28 infrastructure projects for aquatic seed production; 89 aquaculture infrastructure projects with an additional aquaculture area of about 48,000 ha.

Thanks to the decree, two projects have been operated to strengthen capacity in testing aquaculture activities in the Mekong Delta and monitoring the environment for prevention of aquatic diseases in the northern region.

Shortcomings

Under the decree’s implementation, most of the difficulties have been actively removed by the Government and ministries.

However, there are still some shortcomings, including investment in fishery and aquaculture infrastructure has not been achieved according to the goals of the decree; the budget allocated to implement the policy is still limited, mainly from the State budget; and the fisheries infrastructure works are degraded and overloaded.

Besides, total outstanding loans and bad debts are still high. The interest rate of 6.5 per cent for loans of fishermen is relatively high, while the lending mechanism is not favorable for fishermen.

The insurance policy only meets the demand of only 62 per cent of offshore fishing vessels while only 56 per cent of fishermen have benefited from the policy.

Currently, owners of 278 steel-hulled vessels (accounting for over 65 per cent of steel-hulled fishing vessels) do not maintain their fishing vessels as regulations, leading to some ships being degraded and seriously affecting their lifespan.

The approval of the list of ship owners eligible for loans for new construction of vessels is not appropriate; the ship owners are not knowledgeable about the profession.

Some owners do not have the capacity to manage, operate and exploit newly built large-scale and modern vessels. Therefore, when the vessels are put into operation, the efficiency is low.

The approval of the local production and business plan has not carefully considered factors affecting the fishing industry, logistics services or changes in resources, therefore, when the vessels are put into operation, they have low efficiency.

An amended decree

The ministry has reported to the Government and coordinated with ministries and localities to develop a draft decree amending and replacing Decree 67 to fix the shortcomings.

The amended decree will be submitted to the Government in the second quarter of this year. In the draft decree, the ministry will propose the Government to consider and decide on a number of main contents as follows:

It is advised to continue to prioritize investment capital to build fishery and aquaculture infrastructure. In which, the central budget will support 90 per cent of the construction of essential infrastructure of fishing ports and provincial anchorages.

It should have regulations on debt restructuring so that fishermen can continue to enjoy interest rate support for loans to build new and upgrade vessels that are at risk due to external and force majeure reasons in order to create favorable conditions for owners to operate their vessels in production and repay the loan.

It is consulted to amend the policy on the change of ship-owners, who are no longer able to continue to carry out new construction or upgrade their vessels or no longer have the capacity to operate and implement seafood exploitation so that the new ship owner will continue to enjoy the support policies when receiving the ship handover and the loan from the old ship owner./.