Russia has banned the import of fish from the European Union and the United States. It would seem that this is a chance for our fishermen. They have been moaning for years: they say, we are ready to fill the stores with the freshest goods, but damned imports are in the way. But... the miracle did not happen. The price of fish has gone up, and that’s all. This means that our fishermen are not capable of anything, the average person thinks. We talked with Alexander Savelyev, the most advanced expert today, about how the fishing industry actually works. He is the head of the Information Agency on Fishing Industry Issues. Before that, he headed the Public Relations Center of Rosrybolovstvo for almost seven years. A.
FROM THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE - JUST CHATTER
- Are retaliatory sanctions generally good or bad for the industry?
Definitely a blessing. For a country bordered by thirteen seas, with more than two million lakes and more than two million rivers, the chance to realize its fishing potential has miraculously arisen. We have 240 commercial fish species. Almost a year can be changed daily fish dish and never happen again.
Only rubbish in the form of artificially grown fish has been and will be imported into Russia. All this Norwegian salmon, Chinese tilapia, Vietnamese pangasius, all these bream, sea bass - fish from cages and ditches, fed with feed with the addition of growth stimulants, antibiotics, dyes, cannot be compared with high-quality wild Russian fish. In addition, this rubbish is also many times more expensive here. And our fish is exported - almost half of all volumes. And this is only according to the official account. Criminal poaching is estimated at almost $1 billion more.
- Who is to blame?
This situation is very beneficial for importers and exporters. The state has created very favorable conditions for them. They process the goods within two hours, but in order to send fish from Sakhalin to Ryazan, you have to run around with paperwork for a couple of weeks and spend money. So, purely economically, working on the domestic market is much less profitable.
- But now everything is different?
Indeed, it took 24 hours to introduce countermeasures against Western sanctions. The government apparatus can sometimes work quickly and efficiently. But more than two months have passed since the introduction of a food embargo, including fish from the United States, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Norway, and the Ministry of Agriculture has done nothing except chatter. No finger has been lifted regarding import substitution, stimulating native fishermen and fish processors, and increasing the profitability of their business. Fishermen still spend billions on veterinary clearance alone. The Ministry of Agriculture has a department for regulation in the field of fisheries and aquaculture. It is unclear what they regulate there.
At the same time, the ministry seeks to further burden the work of fishermen. A 50-100% increase in payments for the use of aquatic biological resources is being seriously discussed. Why do we pay officials salaries?
DISCOVER FOR MONEY
- At the same time, fish becomes more expensive.
The growth in retail prices for frozen whole fish is outpacing inflation and reached almost 11% since the beginning of the year only by September, according to Rosstat. For other items, prices are generally off the charts. Neither the Ministry of Agriculture nor Rosrybolovstvo is interested in this at all. Not a single step has been taken to regulate prices. They are focused on something else.
- On what?
On how to redistribute quotas in three years or how to deprive fishermen of additional monetary fees. The other day there was an official announcement that the volume of fish transportation from the Far East to the western regions of the country fell by almost a quarter. It is much easier and more profitable for Far Eastern fishermen to hand over their entire catch to huge logistics centers South Korea and China.
What do officials do about this? Minister of Agriculture Nikolai Fedorov threatens those who raise fish prices with law enforcement agencies, and Rosrybolovstvo is looking for fish from the Icelanders, the Chileans, or the Faroese. Not only is this simply humiliating, but it also adds problems to your own business. What is the Faroe Islands? God-forgotten islands in the North Atlantic. There was no written language there until the 19th century.
- Well, writing has nothing to do with it, maybe they have better fish?
We have our own excellent fish in abundance. But look at what Rosrybolovstvo is doing at this time. The department is closing fishing on the rivers of Kamchatka a month earlier than last year. As a result, the fishermen lost tens of millions of rubles.
INSTEAD OF GROWTH - FALL
- Alexander Anatolyevich, maybe you just have a subjective attitude towards Rosrybolovstvo after you left it?
In my opinion, a change of team should be characterized by a new stage of development. But almost a year has passed and the numbers are falling. Only two numbers. Fish catch volumes - minus 5%. This is taking into account the fact that Crimean fish has joined the all-Russian fish. Therefore, the real drop is even greater. The catch of the most, as they say, popular varieties - salmon, herring, pollock - has decreased. And most importantly, fish consumption is decreasing in the country. The forecast for this year is less than 15 kg on average per person. In the past, let me remind you, it was 22 kg. With a recommended norm of 20 kg. In general, all this is sad. At the same time, the direct instructions of the president and prime minister regarding the fishery complex are not being carried out.
- Which ones exactly?
Just one example. The Ministry of Agriculture has been preparing the law “On Aquaculture” for 14 years. Last year, the president finally signed it and ordered the adoption of a set of by-laws by the end of 2013 so that it would work in practice. However, 2014 is ending, and the law on aquaculture has not been implemented; the necessary government regulations and orders have not been prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture.
Our Ministry of Agriculture lacks the proper qualifications of officials who are involved in the development of aquaculture in Russia, and the proper responsibility. But the saddest thing is that the department does not carry out the government’s instructions very well. The Prime Minister has also repeatedly pointed out the need to develop aquaculture in the country. We have enormous potential in this direction, especially in the Far East. The former head of Rosrybolovstvo, Andrei Krainy, more than once sent proposals for the development of the industry to the Ministry of Agriculture. Only projects in the Primorsky and Khabarovsk Territories, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands open up the prospect of creating more than one million jobs. The market in this area is limitless. China, for example, will buy as much sea cucumber as we offer it there. And the scallops! Sea kale! Mussels! Oysters! As a result, these proposals fell into the Ministry of Agriculture like nuts into a swamp.
We are hopelessly behind in the field of aquaculture, we have missed several technological revolutions in this area, and, like fifteen years ago, we produce a paltry 150 thousand tons of fish. For comparison, I will say that in China, for example, this figure is close to 50 million tons. And we will continue to wait for decades for some pieces of paper from the Ministry of Agriculture.
NOTE TO BUYER
How sellers “revive” goods
- I was breathtaking abroad from the abundance at the fish markets...
Here we are talking about aquaculture. This is perhaps the only potential for growth in the live and chilled fish market. That is, the fresh fish that we see on foreign shelves.
- What do we have?
At one Moscow market, I was praised for a chilled squid fillet encased in ice, produced by a fishing company I know very well. I know that this company produces squid in the Bering Sea, about three days' sailing from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and a week's sailing from Vladivostok. I figured out in my mind how it would be possible to deliver chilled squid fillets from there to the capital ten thousand kilometers away?.. It just doesn’t work out. And next to it lay a chilled cod fillet. The seller cheerfully said that it was made right at sea on a ship. It would be better if he did not say this, because all cod fillets produced on board fishing vessels in the Northern Basin are immediately frozen.
- So this is all not true?
You see, the phrase “chilled fish” is a specific term, GOST 814-96. One of three possible options for selling fish. In the store it can be either live in aquariums, or frozen in freezers, or chilled on so-called glaciers. Only live, freshly caught fish are suitable for cooling. That is, according to GOST, it is impossible to produce chilled fish from frozen fish.
Fish processing enterprises that are members of the Fishing Union have made a proposal to lift the ban on fish supplies from some countries of the world, introduced in August 2014. The initiative is due to what did not happen. He discusses why the Russian fish export market is “more popular” than the domestic one and what the price of seafood production for domestic use is. Head of the Fisheries Information Agency Alexander Savelyev:
I understand the Fisheries Union because they made windfall profits from the crap they brought in from abroad, including this Norwegian aquaculture salmon and trout. According to Norwegian scientists, this is the most toxic food in the world. Now the concern of the Fisheries Union is due to the fact that most of the Russian fish, about 60%, caught in Russia, is sent directly for export. Moreover, the government and Rosrybolovstvo propose spending another trillion rubles to stimulate exports.
A completely absurd situation arises: on the one hand, we motivate and stimulate exports in every possible way, we export our own fish, and on the other hand, we are perplexed that there are not enough raw materials at fish processing enterprises. Here, as they say, “either put on your panties or take off your cross,” so you need to turn on all the levers in the hands of the regulator in order to saturate the domestic market with your own fish. Including the need to provide raw materials. The most in an efficient way This is achieved through differentiation of fee rates for the use of aquatic biological resources.
This means that if fish is exported, then it is necessary to fulfill the plan 100%, and if it is supplied to the domestic market, to enterprises in one’s own country, then, accordingly, 0%. It is necessary to cancel VAT refunds to exporters, remove all levies in home ports, which build some insurmountable administrative barriers in the way of fishermen, there are a lot of levers. We need to create all the conditions to saturate the domestic market and motivate it. So far, the entire economic situation is developing in such a way that it is simply more profitable to export fish. Firstly, the dollar exchange rate has increased, and secondly, upon joining the WTO, we committed ourselves to zero import and export duties.
The mechanism is clear: every customs officer, border guard and “sand.” Veterinary documents alone cost Russian fishermen about 9 billion rubles a year. In such a situation, who in their right mind would take the fish to their home port? Therefore, these bewilderments and these groans about the lack of raw materials are quite understandable, on the one hand, but on the other hand, everything is in the hands of the regulator - you need to use your head, first of all. Fishing business due to “regulatory chaos,” it incurs losses of 17 billion rubles annually.
Head of the Fisheries Information Agency
He studied at the Verbilkovsky secondary school, the sculpture workshop of the porcelain factory - qualification as a sculptor-model maker, at the Moscow State University named after M. Lomonosov and the University of Potsdam (Die Universität Potsdam) - specialty journalist, literary worker, master's qualification in the international certification system.
He worked in professional positions in publications of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR and the Russian Federation, in a joint Russian-Swiss enterprise, the general representative office of OJSC GAZ in Moscow, the companies Siberian Aluminum, Ruspromavto, and in an investment consulting group.
Has about two thousand publications in print media. Member of the Russian Union of Journalists, member of the International Federation of Journalists.
2007-2014 – Head of the Public Relations Center of the Federal Fisheries Agency.
2008-2014 - Chairman of the Public Council under Rosrybolovstvo.
Since 2014 - Head of the Fisheries Information Agency.
Awarded the badge “For Assistance to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia.”
Married, two daughters.
Alexander Savelyev in the news
FAS found quotas for auctions
At a meeting of the expert council on the fishery complex, the FAS announced a new initiative: not to take into account the fishing history of quota shares in the event of the sale or reorganization of fishing enterprises.
The food industry development strategy is far from reality
According to the Public Council under Rosrybolovstvo, the Strategy for the Development of the Food and Processing Industry of the Russian Federation until 2020 cannot be analyzed in terms of fish processing and needs serious improvement.
Eco-labeling or buyer bait
Successful certification of leading Russian fisheries according to MSC standards does not guarantee the availability of environmentally responsible fish products to the population.
Alexander Savelyev, head of the Fisheries Information Agency
Fishing will be suspended from January 1 next year, which is 90 days away.
Recently, during an all-Russian conference call, the Department of Science and Education of the Federal Fisheries Agency informed the public that the deadlines for the state environmental assessment of total allowable catches and their adjustments were not met. This means that an emergency situation has arisen.
Total allowable catch, or TAC, is a fundamental metric for the industry. Every fisherman, every fishing company in Russia that owns quotas for fishing fish or other aquatic biological resources, expects this indicator in order to see what share of this TAC is allowed to be caught next year, in order to make their plans, in order to eventually begin actual fishing since January 1st. This is a fundamental thing for the industry. Without ODU, no fishing will begin.
This year, fishermen were left without TAC!
Due to a large, or rather unprecedented, number of comments from Rosprirodnadzor to the materials prepared by Rosrybolovstvo, orders to conduct a state environmental assessment were issued by the relevant Department of Rosprirodnadzor with an unacceptable delay. For example, according to the Far Eastern federal district- September 17, 18, 19. At the same time, the period for conducting the examination for the TAC for the next year, 2019, is set at two months, and another month for adjustments to the TAC. That is, we are not in time for the New Year.
In dry bureaucratic language it looks like this. The state environmental assessment of the ODU for 2019 cannot be completed within the time frame established by government decree Russian Federation dated July 25, 2009 No. 531 “On the determination and approval of the total allowable catch of aquatic biological resources and its changes” - until October 1 of the current year. This will lead to the inability of Rosrybolovstvo to timely distribute quotas for production (catch) of aquatic biological resources and issue permits within the regulatory deadlines and, accordingly, to stop fishing for most types of aquatic biological resources from January 1, 2019.
Need I say that failure to meet deadlines for the examination entails significant losses for fishery enterprises, primarily in the pollock fishery and a whole range of fish in coastal fisheries? Moreover, these losses cannot be compensated even during subsequent work due to the limited period of fishing in winter period. Need I say that such New Year's gift from Rosrybolovstvo will not add gastronomic joy and variety to the already meager fish counters?
The only thing that somehow justifies the officials is their extreme workload. Over the past year, Rosrybolovstvo has been so carried away by organizing auctions in the industry that, as they say, it does not get around to performing direct functionality.
Now the forecast.
The state environmental assessment and adjustment of the TAC for a number of fishing facilities will end no earlier than October 16. The release of orders from the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia and Rosrybolovstvo on the distribution of quotas for production (catch) of aquatic biological resources between users will take place within three to four weeks. And they still need to be published!
Of course, in the conditions of the emergency that has arisen, officials will now move, but downtime in the fishery is guaranteed to occur.
Who will bear responsibility for millions of losses, for lost tax revenues, for unpaid salaries? Who will be responsible for this mess?
Now, as usual, appeals from all coastal regions, indignation, indignation, demands will fly to the government, to the president... (Let us note in parentheses, does Oleg Kozhemyako, for example, need this on the eve of the elections?!) In fact, many questions arise. But the question of when and which officials will fly from their comfortable seats is as fundamental for the industry as the formation of the ODU in accordance with government regulations.
In fact, many such appeals, indignations, indignations and demands have accumulated over the past year. I will name only the recent one. The All-Russian Association of Fisheries turned to the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation with a request to evaluate the effectiveness public administration in the fisheries sector. VARPE President German Zverev sent an appeal to the Chairman of the Russian Federation SP Aleksey Kudrin with a request to openly analyze the methods for assessing the effectiveness of public administration in the fisheries sector, which are used by federal departments, and the financial and economic risks of legislative instability. “In the last 3-4 months, the actions of the government of the Russian Federation in terms of regulating the fishery complex have all the signs of “regulatory chaos,” the VARPE press service quotes a letter from German Zverev on its website.
It will be interesting to know the reaction of the head of the department, Alexei Kudrin, who introduced this term in the Development Strategy of the Russian Federation for 2018-2024, as the head of the Center for Strategic Research, as well as the reaction of other responsible persons to the current emergency situation in the fishing industry.
