New Fishing Rights Allocated

The Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Bernard Esau, announced the new fishing rights to harvest marine resources last week in Windhoek.

According to the New Era, no single company or applicant will be granted an individual right mostly in the main commercial species like hake, horse-mackerel, large pelagic and monk.

The rights will be granted per group to form joint ventures and each right must, at most, comprise of five companies in all the above-mentioned species, according to Mr Esau.

“This is to ensure that more people are accommodated in order to benefit from the limited resources,” he said, adding that the harvesting rights are granted for seven years.

The minister explained that there was an overwhelming response from applicants, which set a new record high in terms of the number of applications received.

“A total of 1,428 applications were received last year, of which 107 were invalid, 167 incomplete after which 1,154 were evaluated by the evaluation committee,” he said.

There are currently 139 fishing rights in existence.

Mr Esau clarified that the fishing rights were allocated as follows: 12 rights were granted for hake, 10 were granted for horse-mackerel and large pelagic each and six rights were granted for monk.

The rights are granted with at most five companies per right for these species. Furthermore, four individual rights were granted for crab, nine individual for line fishery and four individual for rock lobster, among others.

According to Mr Esau, the ministry is still in the process of informing the successful companies, after which the information would be made public.