Amid finance sector experts’ warnings that the country’s economy is deteriorating, president Vladimir Putin ensures that Russia’s fisheries industry will soon supply high-quality fish products to the domestic market.
This was announced by president Putin at the State Council Presidium meeting, when he explained that to achieve this goal, the industry will have infrastructure projects in the fish processing sector and shipbuilding for the industry’s needs, Morning News USA reported.
In the meeting, Putin highlighted that three quarters of Russia’s fisheries industry is based on its own marine resources and added that the country is one of the leading states in the world as to catch volumes. But Russia exports good catches to other countries and what is left in the local market are imported and rather expensive products, not all of them good quality.
If Russia continues to export its fishes, other countries get not only its best fish species, but also opportunities for creating new jobs and developing their economies and the processing industries, president Putin outlined.
But neither Russia nor its people can accept a situation when the range and price of fish on the domestic market is decided by foreign suppliers and retailers, he pointed out.
Therefore, he insisted on the need to update Russia’s fishing infrastructures for the benefit of Russia first and make export a second in the priority only.
Murmansk Region Governor Marina Kovtun supported the president’s statements and agreed with the necessity to facilitate the development of coastal fishing and fish processing in coastal regions so that companies feel confident and invest into the development while northern population will have high quality products at affordable prices, Port News informed.
According to the governor, legislation updating and the expansion of powers of the regional authorities are also important for the region both in terms of aquaculture development and for prevention of Kola environment damage.
Murmansk Region is the leading fishery area in the North-West region of Russia, accounting for 60 per cent of the entire catch in the Northern fishery basin.
Annual catch of the region’s companies is 600,000-700,000 tonnes of aquatic bio-resources, and the results of 2015 are expected to exceed the catch of the previous year by 13,000 tonnes.
Also present at the meeting, the Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov said the naval industry would have the capacity to construct big 6 fishing vessels and between 15 and 20 mid-size ships to meet the the Russian Federal Fisheries’ needs.
For his part, Arkhangelsk Governor Igor Orlov highlighted the significance of Federal Legislation to support shipbuilding but Ilya Shestakov, Head of the Russian Federal Fisheries Agency, and other meeting participants considered additional encouraging measures are required.
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