A total of 51 317 metric tons (MT) of the 87 500 MT governmental objectives quotas which were auctioned in 2021 have still not been caught, Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Derek Klazen, has revealed.
Klazen, at a media briefing here on Friday, said the Horse Markerel quotas have not yet been caught due to a number of factors, including the fact that the auction was done in June, which was late in the year.
“This imposed time constraint on successful bidders to organise and coordinate their logistics and legal compliance documents to catching and landing their purchased quotas [was a factor]. Another contributing factor was the bad catches in the last months of the season,” Klazen noted.
Cabinet has therefore directed the ministry to award the uncaught MTs of Horse Markerel to the various companies and entities, which is then expected to be caught and landed during the 2022 fishing season.
60 200 of the quotas were auctioned to 12 companies and entities and the remaining 27 000 MT were auctioned to the Democratic Republic of Congo Government at about N. dollars 86 million.
According to Klazen, this therefore means that governmental objective quotas will be reduced.
“This definitely has an impact on governmental objective quotas. However, as a caring government, we need to look to the plea of our people who have invested money in this auction and the factors which caused all this, were inevitable.”
Klazen said this is however a once-off decision, which will not happen again because the ministry has now taken a decision to have the next auction of the remaining about 7000 MT on time in order to avoid a repeat of the last auction’s results.
“From next year, we believe that figures will look better and we will do things differently,” he said.
Source: The Namibian Press Agency