France provides soft loan to curb illegal fishing

France provides soft loan to curb illegal fishing

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Indonesian and French governments signed on Monday an
agreement on the financing of a project to curb rampant illegal
fishing in Indonesian waters by foreign vessels.

The French Embassy in Indonesia said in a statement that the
agreement had been signed by the French ambassador Herve Ladsous
and the director general for economic affairs at the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, Makarim Wibisono.

Under the agreement, the embassy said, the French government
would grant a soft loan worth 9.38 million euros (US$8.23
million) to help Indonesia in implementing a Fishing Vessel
Monitoring System (VMS), a satellite-based technology developed
by French company CLS Argos, a subsidiary of the French Space
Agency (CNES).

Under the terms of the agreement, Indonesia will pay back the
loan over 20 years with a five-year grace period and interest of
2.35 percent per year.

Using the VMS technology, the Ministry of Fishing and Maritime
Affairs will be able to track down the movement of fishing
vessels which illegally enter the country's waters, the embassy
said adding that major fishing countries like Peru, Russia, and
Japan use similar technology.

CLS Argos, which is to collaborate with THALES Tracs in
installing the technology, will transfer its transmitter
technology to Indonesia and set up a data center to be manned by
Indonesians to process all the data, it said.

Earlier, American technology firm Lockheed Martin and local
firm InfoAsia Group announced they were also seeking to sell VMS
technology to the ministry.

It remains unclear if both these firms still have the
opportunity of selling their products to the ministry.