Russia's Federal Agency for Fisheries confirms plans for allocation of crab quota shares at electronic auctions

Russia’s Federal Agency for Fisheries (FAF) sees no prerequisites for dropping the plans of allocating half of crab quota shares at electronic auctions, according to media reports as per mid-December.

With up to 100% margins of the crab fishery the above plans are supposed to encourage construction of new crabber fleet to boost efficiency of the fishery, while the government will be able to get to the super profits of crab companies. The final decision though is still to be made by the government.

The crab quota shares to be auctioned are linked to an investment liability stipulating that auction winners will have to build crabbers at home yards.

The draft budget for 2019–2021 submitted to the State Duma at the end of September 2018, provides for introduction of a new quota exclusively for crab and auctioning highly liquid and highly demanded shares of quotas for capture of crab and craboids in the Far East and North Fishery basins in 2019–2020.

The revenue from these auctions is forecasted at 40.9 billion rubles in 2019 and 41 billion rubles in 2020. The government-approved "roadmap" for the development of competition for 2018–2020 stipulates that half of the crab quotas will be distributed at electronic auctions.