Russia's new legislation to boost value and alter global supply patterns

The new Russian legislation for the fish industry has laid grounds for a big boost to the Russian seafood industry across the whole value chain with the nation's catch to reach the domestic and global markets via more processing at home, conclude the analysts of http://www.fishnet-russia.com/ (https://www.fishnet.ru/).

The measures include the amended FEDERAL LAW ON FISHERY AND CONSERVATION OF AQUATIC BIOLOGICAL RESOURCES, the respective amendments to the Tax Code and other legislative acts of the Russian Federation. The bulk of the regulations are to come into full force as of 1 January 2009 and the market still has some time to prepare for these new legal and economic conditions for fish business, covering 10 year capture quota shares, salmon river concessions for the period of up to 20 years, soft resource fees for domestic suppliers to Russia, export of products via authorized fish auctions, high seas catch registration on the customs' territory of the Russian Federation and other measures.

The letter and spirit of the document are explicitly aiming at full recovery of Russia's control of fishing operations while banning foreign participation in this field. This will be combined with crackdown on IUU fishing, implementation of sustainability as well as incentives for renewal of domestic fleets and onshore factories. The material flows will be increasingly channeled for processing on Russian territory and in the latter two sectors (including shipbuilding) the foreign investors are expected to find lucrative applications for their capitals.

Aquaculture

Aquaculture National Project has also taken off, which is making large soft credits available for fast development of the industry through part subsidizing of the interest rates and it is hoped that, in particular, the Russian farmed trout will put up serious competition to Norwegian and Chilean product on the Russian booming seafood market in the foreseeable future.

Obviously, this time for breath the industry players will use to reconsider their marketing strategy and make their investment plans more ambitious. More so, the plans for development will be boosted by substantial financial backing. The government has already appointed Rosselkhozbank (Russian Agricultural Bank) as its authorized institution to annually extend about RUB50 billion (ca.2 billion USD) worth of soft credits to develop all the above involved sectors.

English language version of Russia's FEDERAL LAW ON FISHERY AND CONSERVATION OF AQUATIC BIOLOGICAL RESOURCES as amended in 2005-2007 as well as sortable offshore and inshore company quota guides are available from http://www.fishnet-russia.com/.

Other useful features include Russian Fish Report E-Monthly, Russian Seafood Directory, Russia's seafood import statistics, Statistics of fish consumption in Russia, Russian catch data, Sortable E-Guides of Russian Company Offshore, Inshore and Research Quotas for Commercial Fishery 2005-2008, etc.

For more information regarding subsription to the Russian Fish Report PROFI Pack please click http://www.fishnet-russia.com/issues/ or contact Ms. Oksana Kozlova tel./fax: +7 81153 50885, sales@fishnet-russia.com, 402622314, skype: oksana7445