Russia's State Duma, the lower house of the country's parliament, has passed a controversial bill on crab quotas.
The decision leaves the country's seafood industry more questions than answers as many crucial regulations are not addressed in the bill, and require secondary legislative acts to fill in the gaps.
There are two stages left for the bill to be signed into law. First, the initiative will be voted on in the upper chamber, the Federation Council. Thereafter, it will move to the desk of President Vladimir Putin for his signature. It is anticipated that these two stages as quickly as the crab quota bill passed through the State Duma, where the bill was introduced and passed in less than a month. Only bills deemed high legislative priorities move that quickly through Russia's legislative process.
The primary focus of the bill is the introduction of a new quotas for fishing crab, called “investment quotas.” These quotas resemble an existing tool with the same name that the government has been using over the last several years to spur national fisheries to upgrade their fleets and build processing facilities. In exchange for fulfilling obligations to invest in new vessels or processing plants, companies are awarded additional fishing quota.
The new bill moves 50 percent of the total allowable catch of Russia's crab fisheries to quotas sold via online auctions. One of the missing pieces of the new legislation is that it does not define what the winners of the auctions must invest in to secure the quota – that’s a subject for a special subsequent government decree. As representatives of Russia's Federal Agency for Fisheries have said the investments required will be the purchase of new crab vessels. In recent years, Russian crab companies have enjoyed “excess profits” from their trade while refusing to invest in fleet renovation, according to the agency.
The government also has yet to decide which species of crab and which fisheries will be subject to the quotas, though it has clarified that the crab investment quotas will be allocated for 15 years, with the requirement that companies must implement their investment projects within five years after placing a winning bid.
The new bill also places government in charge of the management of the investment process, starting from defining technical parameters of the objects and time periods, to oversight over the implementation of the projects and fulfillment of investors’ obligations. It will be responsible for preparing lots for the auctions as well.
The crab-fishing sector continues to oppose the bill.
