Russia’s Federal Fisheries Agency (Rosrybolovstvo) is making another attempt to sell certain deep-sea snow crab quotas after multiple earlier attempts failed.
The auction is being sold in two lots, with each lot including 50 percent of the shares of investment quotas for snow crab in the North Okhotsk and East Sakhalin subzones, as well as red snow crab in the Primorye and West Sakhalin subzones, Fishnews reported. The latest starting price for the auction has been set at RUB 852 million (USD 10.6 million, EUR 9.1 million), down from RUB 946.7 million (USD 11.8 million, EUR 10.1 million) it posted during the previous attempt to sell the crab quotas.
Alongside the purchase price, buyers of the crab quotas will be required to build a new fishing vessel in Russia.
Russia has tried to sell these particular quotas multiple times, with the most recent attempt in June failing to attract any applications to even participate in the auction. Rosrybolovstvo has tried multiple avenues to get companies to bid on the crab quotas, including increasing the size of the catch quota shares for sale and lowering the price multiple times.
Despite Rosrybolovstvo’s efforts, this marks the seventh attempt that the agency has made to sell the quota. The quota in question was originally distributed, but the contract handing out those quotas was later terminated – in part related to alleged foreign control of parts of the companies that won those quotas. Russia has cracked down on any foreign investments in its seafood industry in recent years after it classified the industry as critically important to national food security.
