An attempt to sell catch quotas for a lot of deep-sea crabs in the Russian Far East has been cancelled for the third time after no buyers approached to participate.
The lots included a 50 percent share of the red snow crab quota in the Primorye and West Sakhalin subzones and triangle tanner crab in the North Okhotsk and East Sakhalin subzones. The starting price for the auction was RUB 1.3 billion (USD 15 million, EUR 14.2 million), a reduction from the RUB 1.4 billion (USD 16.1 million EUR 15.3 million) it had last time, fishnews reports.
Along with the purchase price, the auctions also come with a guarantee that the company invest in a fishing vessel built in Russia.
The Association of Fishing Enterprises of Primorye (ARPP) called on the Russian Federal Fisheries Agency (Rosrybolovstvo) to remove those investment obligations in order to finally sell the quotas and bring them out of reserve, fishnews reported. As it stands, the crab quotas are currently unavailable for development and can’t be fished.
"It is estimated that due to the failure to develop the ‘frozen’ quota volumes, the country's budget system annually loses about [RUB] 4 billion [USD 46 million, EUR 43 million] in taxes, fees and duties,” the association said.
The association said as it stands, the auctions will be clearly unprofitable for companies to purchase. To develop the quota properly, ARPP President Georgy Martynov said, four crab fishing vessels capable of fishing at up to 1,500 meters are required with associated coasts – while the market for deep-sea crabs makes them much cheaper to sell than other species.
Russia has struggled to sell certain quotas of deep-sea crabs as part of the investment quota auctions first started in 2019.
