Then the Federation Council and the State Duma adopted special resolutions stating that there would be no further creeping expansion of auctions. These were important political gestures that lowered the temperature in the industry. The fishermen had barely recovered from such cruel and unceremonious treatment of the industry, and the Ministry of Agriculture had already decided to allocate another 20% of quotas for pollock and herring in the Far East as investments, masking, as it turned out, a new round of quota redistribution with this initiative.
Let us recall that the fate of the fishing industry was discussed throughout the year at all possible venues. It seemed that everyone was finally focused on achieving a common goal – stability in the industry. However, in early December, key departments hastily launched a draft amendment to the fisheries law in terms of increasing the efficiency of distribution of quotas for the production of aquatic biological resources, which put an end to all hopes – except for 20% of investment quotas for pollock and herring, the authors propose to set auctions for the remaining 50% of the “historical quotas” for crab, although the contracts will expire in 2033 and…. ALL quotas for whelk, sea urchin, sea cucumber and scallop. That is, it was decided to leave an entire segment of the industry without resources at once and, consequently, to ruin operating enterprises, deprive thousands of fishermen of their earnings, and leave their families without a livelihood.
The haste led to the fact that the document was extremely crude, which is why all departments responded with bewilderment and dozens of amendments.
The FAS noted that “a large-scale redistribution of shares of quotas for the extraction of aquatic biological resources can lead to the consolidation and concentration of a large volume of shares of quotas for the extraction of certain types of aquatic biological resources among persons (groups of persons), which in turn may entail the prevention, limitation, and elimination of competition.”
The Ministry for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic reported that “the bill does not provide for the protection of investors in crab auctions,” and there were also a lot of errors and inaccuracies.”
The Ministry of Industry and Trade sent 8 points of amendments, and also asked for a more detailed justification, because “the amounts of part of the total allowable catch of certain types of aquatic biological resources and crabs, provided for distribution in relation to quotas for the production of ABR (aquatic biological resources) investment goals of the second stage, may have an impact negative impact on investment projects already being implemented.”
The Ministry of Economy did not understand at all what exactly needed to be answered, since “the explanatory note and the attached documents do not provide justification for the need to introduce this type of quotas, nor does it provide an analysis of the economic effect of the implementation of this mechanism, including for legal entities and individual entrepreneurs who are already mastering these resources.”
In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about the need for investment, KPIs are being set, numerous road maps are being developed – but tell me, who will bring money to an industry that is broken every year, gnawing off whole pieces, in the absence of any rules, guided by raw documents and regardless of whose -or opinion. The correct answer is no one.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
