Murmansk Commodity and Raw Material Exchange ready for seafood auctions

Murmansk Commodity and Raw Material Exchange is ready to conduct several trial auctions for sale of aquatic biological resources in order to build up experience before the 1st of January 2009 when it is commissioned to handle sales of all the fish landed in the region as stipulated by the last year amendments introduced into the Federal Law "On Fishery and Conservation of Aquatic Biological Resources", reports www.fishnet-russia.com (www.fishnet.ru) with reference to Andrey Nizelsky President of the Exchange as quoted by Murmansk Business Portal.

Nizelsky says that now the Commodity Exchange is ready to conduct the first auctions and fish businesses are welcome to start with selling small lots of fish in order to check the efficiency of such sales and generate the necessary confidence.

Such confidence is guaranteed by the fact that all the fishing companies which will work via the exchange will be protected. Nizelsky explains that there will be no dark horse companies because participants of the auctions will have to meet strict requirements and pass accreditation. Some companies are already going through the procedure.

Andrey Nizelsky hopes that before the end of the year the exchange will conduct trial auctions. It has been initially announced that five exchanges (namely, two in the Russian Far East, one in Kaliningrad, one in Saint Petersburg and one in Murmansk) will become authorized entry gates for the seafood landed both for export and for the domestic market. In the beginning many insiders expected establishment of a separate special exchange, but then the idea was found hardly feasible due to the need of heavy investments into the project.

According to Nizelsky, Murmansk Commodity and Raw Material Exchange relies on the best Russian and foreign developments covering modern trends in the sphere of electronic auctions in the Internet.