“The fish industry has traditionally been one of the systemic ones for the Russian Far East. Over two thirds of fish products are produced here. Thousands of people are employed in the industry. The President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin took the decisions that facilitated inflow of investment in fish processing, building of new vessels. These decisions have already produced significant gains for development of the fish industry in the Russian Far East”, Yury Trutnev said in his welcome address at the meeting.

The state allocated to companies quotas for production of water bio resources in exchange for renovation of the fleet and construction of plants. Construction of facilities within the first stage of the “quotas in exchange for investments” program was discussed at the meeting.

11 plants have already been constructed in the Russian Far East under the investment quotas systems. These are six high capacity plants for processing pollack and other fish: three in Kamchatka, two in the Primorsky Krai and one on Shikotan, the Kuril Islands, as well as five low capacity plants for processing of fish (except for pollack): three in the Kamchatka Krai and two on Sakhalin.

Building of 105 ships (64 fishing ships including 36 ships for the Russian Far East commercial fishing area and 28 – for the Northern commercial fishing area and 41 crab-fishers) is going on under the investment quotas and crab-fishers fleet renewal programs. Eight, or 7.6% of the 105 ships were already built and handed over to the customers (six fishing ships, two crab-fishers). 70 ships under constructions are located in the shipyards (including 32 crab-fishers), of these 19 ships (including two crab-fishers) have already been leaved off. Keel lay down is planned: in 2022 - 13 ships (including one crab-fisher), in 2023 - 11 ships (including three crab-fishers); in 2024 - three crab-fishers.

The participants also discussed import substitution issues and development of domestic ship-building and ship-repairing enterprises. “Today, the fish industry faces a number of challenges due to changes in the sales markets, various complications in supply of components for building ships, equipment and - in the long run - with ship repair”, Yury Trutnev remarked.

Taking into consideration that import components account for 50% in building of fishing fleet ships within the framework of implementation of the investment quotas in the structure of materials and equipment, Rosrybolovstvo (the Russian Federal Agency for Fishery) has prepared and sent for approval to the Federal Executive Authorities the amendments to laws and regulations as regards extending the time period for implementation of ship-building projects by two years.

Besides, due to the significant increase of the key rate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and the need to proceed with the investment cycle, Rosrybolovstvo proposes to subsidize investment loans for the fisheries industry organizations for investment facilities as part of the first stage of the investment quotas for implementation of fishing ships and coastal enterprises construction in 2022.

“We believe that all these measures will allow us not to terminate the investment cycle and proceed with those projects that have been started”, the Head of Rosrybolovstvo Ilya Shestakov reported.

Rosrybolovstvo, together with the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, USC (United Shipbuilding Corporation) and the business community has created a working group for import substitution in fishing ships building, for the purposes of preparing a list of alternative ship and processing equipment. The situation with supplies of foreign ship and components equipment will be analyzed in the nearest future in order to determine the lacking volume, the possibility of localization of supplies, the need for re-design of ships, the cost of such re-design as well as the possibility of state subsidies for re-design.

Yury Trutnev instructed the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation and JSC United Shipbuilding Corporation to submit a detailed time schedule for import substitution of sanctioned ship substructures and components where supply of such substructures and components or their replacement by alternative analogues does not appear possible.

Yury Trutnev instructed Rosrybolovstvo to submit its proposals for subsidizing the loan interest rates for those investors who are engaged in building fishing ships under the investment quotas program.

The agenda included the issues of lifting administrative barriers in the fisheries industry. “Even though the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin has put for everybody the task to reduce administrative barriers, to decrease the number of inspections (where not related to life or health of people), some particular executive authorities have invented additional forms of control. They all should be removed as soon as possible”, Yury Trutnev believes.

The Deputy Prime Minister ordered to the interested federal ministries and departments to ensure, within the shortest possible period, elimination of the procedure of conducting environmental expert examination for documenting the types of water bio resources not subject to quotas.