The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) will give strict fines to fishing vessels involved in illegal fishing with the aim of removing the European Commission's illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing prevention or “yellow card” on fishing, said deputy minister Phùng Đức Tiến.

According to the ministry, in the first six months of this year, total fishery production reached 4.27 million tonnes, up 1.7 per cent over the same period last year, of which, fishing output was 1.93 million tonnes, increasing by 0.2 per cent, and aquaculture output was 2.34 million tonnes, rising by 3 per cent.

Also, in the first half this year, Việt Nam recorded only 14 cases of violations of regulations against IUU fishing, Tiến said.

“This was a positive result as compared to 84 cases last year,” the deputy minister said.

Dương Văn Cường, deputy director of the Fishery Department, said that the IUU issue was a special concern of the Government, ministries, sectors and localities.

After the seventh meeting of the IUU Steering Committee last month, Deputy Prime Minister Trần Lưu Quang had a working visit to Kiên Giang and Cà Mau provinces to review the implementation of anti-IUU fishing measures.

The deputy PM reported that the provinces’ fishing fleets had vessel monitoring systems (VMS) installed along with seafood traceability certificates.

However, there were many shortcomings and limitations in the anti-IUU fishing measures, including fishing vessels and fishermen being detained by foreign countries and insufficient handling of IUU violations.

The VMS had been installed in all vessels but there were still vessels whose owners disconnected the system to deliberately avoid the supervision of the competent authorities.

However, the situation had not yet been strictly handled. Ships docking at private and undesignated fishing ports to load seafood was still common and uncontrolled, causing difficulties in calculating and monitoring the amount of seafood passing through ports.

To solve the problems, Deputy PM Quang directed 28 coastal provinces, especially the Mekong (Cửu Long) Delta region, to implement by October synchronous solutions to stop fishing vessels violating foreign waters, strengthen law enforcement at sea to handle, sanction and manage fishing fleets, as well as ensure the reliability of export shipments to Europe.

Việt Nam’s seafood received the IUU "yellow card", causing a big impact on exports because all shipments are under strict monitoring and two or three weeks of customs clearance time that causes great costs.

Not only the EU, Japan and the US had also raised this issue, said Deputy Minister Tiến.

Currently, the European Council (EC) is raising four issues, including the review and adjustment of a number of regulations to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of IUU fishing; enhancement of management, monitoring, inspection and supervision of fishing vessels; implementation of traceability and management of both imported products and products caught at sea; and strengthening of law enforcement and handling of violations.

Removing the IUU "yellow card" this year is Việt Nam’s goal and it is determined to change the country’s fisheries in a more sustainable direction,  according to Tiến.

This requires each fisherman to be responsible for complying with the law, for the sake of the country and the interests of the fishermen themselves.

“Since the EC's first inspection in October 2017, Việt Nam has not yet been able to remove the IUU ‘yellow card’,” said Tiến.

"The immediate task is to manage and closely monitor the fleets." VNS