Russia, Namibia may set up joint state venture for fishing complex
MOSCOW. Oct 17 (Interfax) - Russia and Namibia may set up a joint state venture for the fishing complex.
"We and Namibia are thinking about creating a state joint venture," the head of Russian federal fisheries agency Rosrybolovstvo, Andrei Krainy, said during a Wednesday press conference in Moscow. He had visited a number countries in Africa last week, discussing prospects for cooperation in the field of fishing.
This JV could be provided with quotas for fishing in Namibian waters, Krainy said. "And these quotas it will transfer to Russian users per defined calculations," he said. During the time he was in Namibia, agreement was reached on the signing of an agreement concerning interaction and cooperation in fishing, he said. "We also agreed on the signing" of an agreement on illegal, unregulated, and unannounced fish harvesting, he said. The plan is for these agreements to be inked by the two countries' scientific research institutes.
While he was in the Republic of South Africa, Krainy said, agreement was reached on the preparation of a memorandum concerning mutual efforts in the fishing industry. Those negotiations were the first such talks in the history of the two countries' relations. "Then we will move to signing an agreement in the sphere of the fishing business that, in particular, will involve the conducting of joint research of fish stocks, the development of aquaculture, and training South African students at Russian institutions," he said. "And we are very interested in issues of the development of marine fishing in South Africa's zone," he added.
As to last week's meeting of a joint Russian-Norwegian commission, Krainy said that it had produced the decision to increase the mutually allowed cod harvest to one million tonnes. "I don't remember there being a figure like that in the last fifty years. It was made possible by Russia and Norway rationally managing fish stocks," he said.
"I hope that there will be more cod on the Russian market in 2013. The quota for catching it is to be split fifty-fifty between Russia and Norway," Krainy said.
The head of Rosrybolovstvo's public relations center, Alexander Savelyev, told Interfax the specified mutually allowed catch does not represent an upper limit, as the catching of cod is on the rise. Citing figures from the Polar Research Institute of Marine Fisheries (PINRO) in Murmansk, he said that there have not been so many cod since observation began in 1900.