Yarema Kovaliv, a former businessman, became the head of the state fish agency in April and has ambitious plans to change the institution that manages fish population, prevents poaching and issue quotas and permits for industrial fishing and lake leases.
The Agriculture Ministry last spring called the agency’s work an “organized crime group” and “Soviet administration system” that “does not allow for efficient use of fish resources…and promotes corruption, extortion, bribery.”
Kovaliv presented his plan in a Sept. 30 Cabinet meeting. His predecessor, Oleh Nikolenko, was fired after an internal investigation by the Agriculture Ministry suspected him of causing $9.4 million in losses to the state, including $8 million from a fishing vessel and embezzlement of $1.4 million from bank acounts of the Sevastopol port.
“Ukraine possesses one of the biggest water surfaces in Europe excluding Russia which gives the sector enormous potential,” Kovaliv said during the meeting.
As a maritime state with 8.6 million hectares of water bodies, of which 890,000 hectares are inland waters, Ukraine imported 88 percent of the fish it consumed in 2014, according to the Agriculture Ministry. In 1991, at the dawn of independence, 95 percent of consumption was from domestic production.
But the way the agency was run is blamed for this dismal record. It was rife with corruption in permits and its inspectors engaged in poaching, rather than optimal fish population management.
Moreover, most fish production is in the shadows, Kovaliv noted. “To give you a feeling, quotas given for pike perch fishing were five times less than the amount of fish officially exported last year.”
The official fish catch, at the same time, is several times lower than in neighboring countries: 30 kilos per hectare as compared to 60 kilos in Poland and 150 kilos in Hungary for the same space.
Among the first steps in reviving the sector, Kovaliv named elimination of inspection by a bloated and underpaid, poorly equipped staff, creation of enforcement patrols based on the principles of the new street police patrols, total deregulation of the permit system and maximum involvement of electronic systems in monitoring.
“Not a single current employee of fish conservation authorities ever spotted in corruption should get into a new organ,” Kovaliv said Boats should be GPS-equipped, for which Norway and Estonia are ready to provide assistance, drones and night view equipment should also be used in fish control.
There will be one window issuing one permitting document for five years instead of five documents for one year.
Another initiative is introduction of the certificate of origination for any product reaching the market. Industrial fishers will be allowed to catch only in designated areas, while the easier-to-obtain pond lease contract will allow access for sport fishermen. No sport fishing payment will be introduced in the next two years.
Kovaliv also suggests to privatize all the state enterprises under the agency’s control and is already discussing it with Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius, who oversees privatization issues.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Gordiienko can be reached at [email protected].
