Govt urged to follow up fisheries deregulation

JAKARTA (JP): Academics and observers welcomed yesterday the government's recent deregulation measures for the fisheries sector but said that further steps were needed to facilitate both the fishing and ship-building industries.

Chairman of the National Shipbuilding Association, Hermawan Kartowisastro, said the deregulation must be followed up with sound facilities, particularly in financing.

"Without the possibility of getting facilities from the banking sector to construct or buy ships, the deregulation will be useless," he said.

The government announced on Thursday reform measures allowing local companies to buy used foreign ships and operate them in the 200-nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone.

The government said, however, that despite the deregulation, locally-produced ships are still expected to make up most of the country's fishing fleets.

The government calculated that at least 240 fishing vessels are needed each year to achieve its target of increasing fisheries production by 5 percent, or 160,000 tons a year.

Since national companies are unable to provide this total amount, imports are now allowed.

The government stipulated that imports should be limited to steel ships weighing more than 100 gross tons, while domestic makes can be made from wood, fiberglass or steel.

So far, local banks have been reluctant to provide fishing companies with loans because the business is considered a risky one.

Hermawan said domestic shipbuilding firms are now capable of building large ships of 4,000 dead weight tons and over.

Financial problems, however, have caused the industry to receive no orders for merchant ships in the last 10 years, he said.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Indonesia currently has 233 shipyards, but only nine of them are capable of manufacturing ships of over 4,000 dead weight tons.

State-owned shipbuilder PT PAL Indonesia is currently constructing 12 long-liners weighing 300 gross tons each in collaboration with the Spanish government.

The 12 vessels are part of the 31 ships which will be built under the program funded by a US$200 million loan from the Spanish government.

Shipyards

Bonar Pasaribu of the Bogor Agricultural University's School of Fisheries said the government should give more serious attention to domestic shipyards, especially those that produce wooden ships weighing 30 gross tons to 40 gross tons.

"Indonesian wooden ships are of high quality and are capable of sailing the exclusive economic zone. They are also cheaper than imports," Antara reported him as saying.

"Therefore, it is a pity that such shipyards are still lacking in capital and technical development," he added.

Other academics, however, were concerned about the impact of the deregulation on Indonesia's fishing stocks.

Lachmuddin Sya'rani, a professor at the Diponegoro University in Semarang, Central Java, said the deregulation might cause over-fishing which, in turn, could endanger the country's fishing stocks.

He pointed out that large fishing vessels generally use equipment incapable of selecting fish stock, thus undersized fish are often among the catch.

"This could endanger the sustainability of the stocks and the preservation of species," he said.

Lachmuddin said that additional rulings are needed to ensure that fishing by large vessels is kept far from the shore, limiting them to deep-sea fishing.

Similarly, a researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, M. Hutomo, said a thorough study is needed to make sure that fishing is kept at a sustainable level.

"Currently, studies on the quantity of fish in Indonesia are very global, meaning that there are no guidelines to determine which species have been overfished and which have not," he said. (pwn)