First electronic fish market scheduled to take off in Murmansk

The first electronic fish market will be opened in Murmansk port in July 2008, according to head of Russia's State Fisheries Andrey Krainy.

Andrey Krainy has also explained that the auction will work as a non-commercial partnership and there will be at least 10 incorporators in the establishment. It means that each part will have no more than 10% of shares. Some of leading companies in the area have already expressed interested in Murmansk fish auction foundation, for example, such players as Murmansk Trawl Fleet, Severo-Zapadnaya Promyslovaya Company (North-West Fishing Company) and FGUP Natsrybresursy (Federal State Establishment National Fish Resources).

As http://www.fishnet-russia.com/ (https://www.fishnet.ru/) reported earlier this year, the Head of the State Fisheries Committee is planning to set up fish auctions in five Russia's largest ports, namely in Vladivostok, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Murmansk and Kaliningrad. Leading companies of the industry are supposed to be founders of the fish exchanges. The auctions are to be financed at a rate of 0.1% from each deal. As the Head of the State's Fisheries Committee underlined, the shares of auction founders will be differentiated. The auction itself is to fulfill two main tasks. First, it will sell both, newly allocated quota shares and the so called secondary capture quota shares (removed from companies fishing illegally or underusing their quota shares).

Second, the auction will sell the seafood going for exportation. The export of seafood via such auctions will be made mandatory by a special resolution of the Government.

It is expected that this form of exportation will legalize supplies, control and monetization of the export deals (earlier some transactions could have a form of barter deals). As for supplies to the domestic market, the fishermen can sell their products both via auction and directly to buyers. This form is to decrease prices of products on the Russian market by 20 - 40% as a proportion of brokers will be put out of the market to make a shorter cut from the producer to the consumer.