Minister of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development Mahinda Amaraweera has said that next year’s budget will award numerous reliefs to the investors or the fisher community that will be deploying cutting-edge fishing vessels to the advancement of the fisheries industry. Minister Amaraweera made this statement at the launching ceremony of two state-of-the-art fishing vessels of the Richwin Ceylon Fisheries Company held at the Dikowita fishery harbor recently. The two fishing vessels are longer than 55 ft and have been manufactured in China with cutting-edge facilities that were unavailable in Sri Lankan fishing vessels up to now. Each vessel can hold a volume of 120 metric tons of fish. The Minister addressing the event mentioned that RichWin Fisheries has rendered a new approach to the Sri Lankan fisheries industry. “With the use of these technologically advanced fishing vessels, a larger volume of fish harvest can be attained with minimum post- harvest losses. 40% of the fish catch harvested by small fishing vessels is not appropriate for consumption. They cannot even be used to make dried fish at least,” the Minister has noted. “Even though we have a number of small fishing vessels in our fishing fleet, we have a limited fish catch. If we replace at least 10 small boats in favor of a single fishing vessel of this nature, we would be able to harvest a larger fish catch. Thus, I have requested from the Cabinet that by the budget of 2018, the investors and fishermen who will be using the cutting-edge fishing vessels should be given reliefs,” the Minister said.