Tulcea Fish Exchange to open in mid-2012
The National Fisheries and Aquaculture Agency (ANPA) has completed a feasibility study for a fish exchange at Tulcea and next week it will hold a tender for the design and construction of the exchange on a 14-millipon-euro investment, ANPA Chairman Marian Manaila told a news conference.
'This investment will help authorised fishermen to sell their fish; there will be tax auditing and the authorities will get information about the fish catches,' said Manaila.
ANPA is also planning on building a 10-million-euro fishing port at Midia under the 2007-2013 Fishery Operational Programme.
Using similar funds, ANPA will also be training authorised fishermen in Romania under a pilot project worth 70,000 euros for the training of 100 Danube Delta fishermen.
'We will design similar programmes for Black Sea and Lower Danube fishermen. Training will provide both book-keeping elements, as many fishermen operate as authorised individual traders, labour protection, navigation on the Danube and conformity with European Union fishing regulations,' Manaila explained.
There are currently 1,500 authorised Danube Delta fishermen, 1,000 Black Sea fishermen and nearly 800 Lower Danube fishermen.
The number of fishermen has stayed constant compared since the 1990s, but Romania's Black Sea fishing fleet was depleted, as out of 30 fishing boats in excess of 25 m each in 1990 only two are still functional, as they were replaced by more than 400 small boats owned by the fishermen.
Under the Fishery Operational Programme, Romania is allocated 307.518 million euros throughout 2013 to finance fishery, aquaculture and processing investments, 230.714 million euros of which is EU assistance under the European Fisheries Fund (EFF) and the remaining national co-financing.
There are 13 million euros allocated for axis 1- to adjust the fishing fleet of Romania; 140 million euros for axis 2- aquaculture; 40 million euros for axis 3 - common interest measures; 100 million euros for the development of fishing areas and 14.3 million euros for technical assistance.