Suchergebnisse

This report investigates and quantifies Norwegian governmental financial transfers (GFT) to primarily the fish harvesting industry, but also the fish processing and aquaculture industries. Focus is on the period 1990 to 2002. The data sources for this report are mainly public accounts of the Ministry of Fisheries, that channelled the bulk of support measures. We also rely heavily on a set of data on the transfer of funds from the Industrial and Regional Development Fund (SND). Finally, annual reports from the Norwegian Fisheries Bank (NFB) have been employed. For fish harvesting, support has been divided in four categories, according to purpose: revenue enhancement, social measures, capital support and intermediate measures. In addition to these, tax exemptions on fuel oil and provision of general services to the industry is discussed. The support for all four categories have shown a sharp decline, particularly from 1991 to 1993, but the trend has continued in the succeeding years. The main factors behind this development has been international obligations from the agreement on the European Economic Area (EEA), increased profitability and government strategy to make the industry self-sustained. Total support has gone down from about 1,100 million Norwegian kroner (NOK) in 1991 to about 250 million NOK in 2001. In 2002 it again fell sharply to about 140 million NOK. These figures exclude tax exemptions on fuel and the provision of general services. Using the NFB annual reports and the SND database, capital support was investigated further, focusing on which vessel groups have received support for this purpose. The results clearly show the SNDs strategy to prioritize large, multi-purpose coastal vessels. Data restricted the study on processing and aquaculture to the period 1994 to 2002. Support for aquaculture amounts to considerably less at about 47 million NOK in 2002, but has shown the opposite trend compared to fish harvesting. This probably corresponds to the continuous high growth of this sector during this period. Aquaculture support mainly consisted of investment grants, but also partial financing of development projects has been important. Support for fish processing increased from about 76 million NOK in 1994 to about 170 million in 1998. This later fell to about 70 million NOK in 2002.

The published version of the article is available in Marine Policy ; In the context of the abolition of traditional subsidies, this paper discusses the persistence of the major remaining subsidy scheme in Norwegian fisheries: exemption from fuel taxes. This reimbursement scheme stems from the late1980s, and has persisted since then under different governments. This paper gives the background to this support against theoretical predictions of the subsidy's effects on fishing behavior and profitability. For 2011, the estimated exempted fuel taxes for the fishing fleet was NOK 999.0 million, amounting to 6.3 percent of the landed value, against NOK 772.7 million (6.4 per cent of landed value) in 2007. The Norwegian scheme is also discussed in relation to similar arrangements in other countries. The national fishing fleet is heterogeneous with respect to oil consumption in transport and fishing operations. Hence, the effect of the fuel subsidy is different for different fleet components. The implications of abolishing this subsidy for the fishing fleet in general and for different vessel groups, as well as its policy implications, are discussed.

The overarching objective of the FarFish project is to provide knowledge, tools and methods to support responsible, sustainable and profitable EU fisheries outside European waters, both within the jurisdiction (EEZ) of non-EU coastal states as well as in international waters / high seas. In order to achieve this the FarFish project has produced this report with the aim to identify, study and potentially recommend investment opportunities for EU operators within some of the project's case study countries. This report studies investment opportunities within the small pelagic fisheries in Mauritanian waters, and the associated value chains, as well as the tuna fish pole and line fishery by the coast of the Atlantic Façade of Africa (mainly SW - Senegal), and the associated value chains. Also, a section is dedicated to investigating the specific case of investment of French capital in tuna fisheries in Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.