Russia's fisheries to get 50 bln rlbs of loans - official

Russian fisheries will receive 50 billion roubles of loans in the near future, head of the State Committee for Fisheries Andrei Krainy told a conference here on Thursday.

The credit line will be opened per agreement with Rosselkhozbank, Krainy said.
"Under the agreement, Rosselkhozbank pledges to reserve 50 billion roubles each year to credit the development of fisheries," he went on to say.

To ease the debt burden, the State Committee for Fisheries intends to request 400 million roubles of federal budget money. It will be used to partially pay the interests on the loans for companies using Rosselkhozbank's services.

The all-Russia conference in Vladivostok on Thursday brought together some 100 fisheries representatives, federal and regional authorities, and large fisheries businesses.

Officials from regional branches of the State Committee for Fisheries are participating as well: the Arkhangelsk, Astrakhan and Kaliningrad regions, the Kamchatka Territory, the Magadan and Murmansk regions, the Primorye Territory, the Sakhalin region, the Khabarovsk Territory, the Chukot Autonomous Area, and Moscow and St.Petersburg.
Opening the meeting, Krainy underlined that a conference of such scope was held "with the view of hearing out fisheries representatives"

"The scale of the country is tremendous and fishing in the far eastern region differs from the Baltic area or Astrakhan by the kinds of seafood and fishing tackle. One has to work out a plan of actions which will begin to be implemented tomorrow," he noted.

The agenda includes the implementation of the president's instructions, the procedure of distributing commercial fishing quotas for imported seafood, and personnel training issues.

DVTimes