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.