Jun 23, 2008
New law targets foreign vessels
Foreign vessels fishing within 200 nautical miles of Kenyan waters will from September be required to declare their catch and pay tax to the Kenya Revenue Authority.
Category: General
Posted by: Anonymous
Foreign vessels fishing within 200 nautical miles of Kenyan waters will from September be required to declare their catch and pay tax to the Kenya Revenue Authority.
Fisheries minister Paul Otuoma announced in Malindi at the end of his four-day tour of Coast Province that a law to compel all foreign ships to call in at Kenyan ports for verification of the quantity, quality and types of fish was being crafted.
He said that for a long time, the country’s marine Exclusive Economic Zone had been a reaping ground for foreigners who make “billions of shillings” each year at the expense of the country’s economy.
“There are more than 100 foreign fishing vessels within Kenya’s zone which haul our wealth to places we don’t know and make billions. We don’t benefit at all. That is why a law is coming to compel them to call at our port for verification before they carry away the cargo,” said the minister.
The minister said plans to build a special port for verification of cargo from all foreign ships fishing within the country’s exclusive zone were at advanced stage. However, he did not name the location for the port, only saying his ministry was in the process of identifying the area.
Sources from the ministry said the likely place for the port was Lamu, Ngomeni, Mayungu in Malindi or Shimoni in the South Coast. The minister made the remarks at Malindi fisheries grounds where he officially opened a Sh6 million cold storage facility. Dr Otuoma said the shipping industry had been neglected for decades and records kept haphazardly. This made it difficult to plan or even budget for the industry.
Grabbed
“The industry, big as it is, has been tossed from one ministry to the other as a branch. It’s only now that we have a fully-fledged ministry and it is the time to take charge. Fishing must improve the lives of local fishermen and benefit the country,” he said.
He ordered ministry staff to make an urgent audit of the grabbed landing sites which the ministry will repossess immediately. He was responding to the Malindi District fisheries officer Philip Agwanda who revealed that all four gazetted landing sites in Malindi had been grabbed by politically correct tycoons.
Earlier Dr Otuoma had said that the Government was focusing on fishing in the Indian Ocean and less exploited inland water in order to meet the demand of fish in the country and following dwindling catches in Lake Victoria.
He was officially launching the operations of the South West Indian Ocean Fisheries project which is funded by the World Bank.
