The Icelandic Fisheries Industry Association (SFS) is pushing back against a proposed bill it said would harm the nation’s fishing and seafood-processing industries.
The bill, which has been introduced to the nation's parliament as amendments to the Fishing Fee Act, aims to change the fee structures that Icelandic fishing companies pay to the government. The new bill proposes changes in recorded catch values for certain commercial stocks when calculating fishing fees.
“The aim of the bill is to ensure that the calculated catch value of certain commercial stocks better reflects the actual catch value and, thereby, fair resource fees for access to marine resources,” the bill intro states.
The bill also said that it assumes additional revenue earned from the new fees would be ISK 2 billion (USD 15.5 million, EUR 13.6 million) in 2025, increasing to ISK 3 billion (USD 23.2 million, EUR 20.5 million) in 2026 and then further to ISK 4 billion (USD 31 million, EUR 27 million) in additional revenue from 2027 onward.
The bill would base fees on catch values, which would be based on official data on fish prices from the Norwegian Fisheries Agency.
The SFS said based on the changes in how prices are calculated, the new bill would amount to a doubling of the fishing fee and claim the changes would result in pushing seafood processing outside the country. SFS called the new tax the “Norwegian route” and that it would reduce value creation in Iceland’s seafood industry.
SFS said the current system is conceived to benefit both fishing and processing and that the relationship between fishing businesses and processing companies is well known and “aims to create the most value that trickles down to the entire community.”
“The result of the arrangement is that almost all Icelandic cod is processed in Iceland,” SFS Managing Director Heiðrún Lind Marteinsdóttir said in a release. “Thousands of jobs are being created around the industry here and the opportunities to create even more value are endless.”
That value is evident in the export value of certain species. In 2023, the export value of Icelandic cod, the company said, was ISK 617 (USD 4.77, EUR 4.20) per kilogram, compared to ISK 533 (USD 4.12, EUR 3.63) per kilogram.
“The final processing in Iceland was a big factor,” Marteinsdóttir said.
Marteinsdóttir said that by increasing the fees on fishing, processing companies will struggle against the increased price of raw materials and lose out on competition from other countries.
“If the fish is processed abroad, Iceland will lose a lot of value in the form of direct jobs, secondary jobs and tax revenue, in addition to greatly weakening the basis for innovation,” Marteinsdóttir said. “This has already happened in Norway.”
She also said many of the country’s smaller fishing firms will be negatively impacted, which will in turn have a direct impact on rural areas.
“Some of them will not be able to withstand the increase, there will be mergers,” Marteinsdóttir said.
