Inspectors from the European Commission will visit Vietnam in late October 2022 to review the country’s progress in combating illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
Coastal provinces and cities, including Khanh Hoa province in central Vietnam, have been asked to make preparations to receive the inspectors, according to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).
Khanh Hoa, along with Phu Yen and Binh Dinh, are Vietnam’s top-three provinces for tuna fishing and processing.
Vietnam was first issued a yellow card in October 2017 after the E.C. decided it had not done enough to halt IUU fishing within its borders. Since its imposition, the E.U. has been conducting a review of Vietnam’s fisheries-related policies to determine which route it will take out of three options available to it: maintaining the country’s yellow card status, issuing a red card banning all seafood imports from Vietnam to the E.U., or rescinding the yellow card and resuming normal trading relations.
VASEP said it has been given no information from the E.C. as to which of those paths it will choose. The visit was originally planned for Q1 2022.
On 14 September, Vietnamese government approved a plan to combat IUU fishing, under which the country plans to install monitoring device on every one of the country’s fishing vessel 15 meters in length or above by 2025. The plan also calls for 100 percent monitoring of seafood products loaded through local fishing ports. And the country said it will apply protocols of the Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA) that require inspection of all imported wild-caught seafood products. The goals of the measures are to halt all IUU fishing in Vietnamese waters and to have the yellow card removed, according to an outline of the plan given by Vietnam Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.
Separately, at the beginning of September, the government of Japan informed Vietnamese seafood companies they will be required to provide catch certificates for four marine species imported into Japan from 1 December, 2022. According to VASEP, these include squid and cuttlefish, Pacific saury, mackerel, and sardine, which are considered as being vulnerable to IUU fishing. Japan is currently the top importer of seafood products from Vietnam.
The National Agro Forestry Fisheries Quality Assurance Department (Nafiqad) under Vietnam’s Agriculture Ministry has already sent a letter to local seafood processors, requesting they study Japan’s new import requirements carefully to avoid any impact to their exports to Japan. Nafiqad also said its regional units are prepared to begin granting relevant certifications for import cargoes once they receive sufficient documents from importers, as specified by local regulations.
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