The All-Russian Association of Fishing Industry (VARPE) and the Russian Far East and Arctic Development Corporation (RFEADC) – a government-run investment vehicle – have signed a cooperation agreement to boost investment in fishery businesses in Russia’s Far East region.
The agreement, signed by RFEADC Executive Director of Seafood Ivan Novikov and VARPE President German Zverev, establishes a project management office (PMO) that will assist businesses interested in investing in the region's seafood industry, and serve as a main tool to implement the agreement. RFEADC was created by the Russian government in 2005 to facilitate the development of areas of Russia’s Far East that are facing economic depression and out-migration through the elimination of administrative barriers and by incentivizing investment.
The seafood industry accounts for 15 percent of the GDP in Russia’s Far East, employs 50,000 workers, and is the main source of income in 17 communities across the area. In March 2022, a seafood-development department was established within RFEADC to facilitate investments in the fishing, shipbuilding, ship repair, and seafood-processing industries.
The new PMO will allow the organizations to conduct joint research and design recommendations for government bodies, according to the RFEADC.
“VARPE and RFEADC have common goals. We aim to create a favorable investment climate and conditions for the development of the region, retaining population by new jobs and an increase in production volumes,” Zverev told media agency Fishnews.
Novikov said the new organization wants feedback from seafood businesses in order to shape more-favorable conditions for entrepreneurs in the region, particularly in the run-up to the second phase of the investment-quota program.
Russia’s Far East yields more than 70 percent of the country’s nearly 5 million metric tons of annual catch, and the region has received special attention from the government in the past few years after the Chinese ports of Qingdao and Dalian were closed to Russian fish imports in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Those two ports previously represented the primary destinations for pollock from Russia's Far East, and the loss of China as a market sent the industry scrambling to find new markets.
Russian Vice Premier Minister Yuri Trutnev, tasked with Arctic and Far East development, has initiated a program to shift processing of fish – typically done in China – to Russia. In addition, the ministry has developed a plan to expand ship-repair facilities in the Far East to serve Russia’s fishing fleet, which has been historically serviced in foreign ports.
Photo courtesy of Belikova Oksana
