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A difference in fuel type has not gone down too well with at least one local fishing operator.
Fiji Fish boss Grahame Southwick expressed disappointment that the industry’s plea to put local fishing operators on par with foreign owned vessels - in terms of the type of fuel they can buy - was not addressed in Government’s 2010 National Budget.
He said locally-owned fleets were now only allowed to use the type of fuel that buses used, as local fishing vessels were classified as local transport.
This, he added, meant they could not enjoy the cheaper new fuel brought in to be sold only to foreign-owned fishing vessels.
“The government insisted we use the same fuel as road transport vehicles and this had restored the imbalance between fuel available to the domestic vessels and foreign vessels,” Southwick told Fiji Live.
“This imbalance was something we battled for years to remove, it was removed in the previous budget and it got to a point where we were pretty much on par with foreign fishing vessels. A new regulation again forced us to switch back to the old fuel and we had again lobbied against it but there is no mention of it in the Budget.”
“It may be still part of an ongoing investigation I think, but we really need the domestic fleet to be on the same footing as the foreign fleet,” said Southwick.
He said the industry welcomed government’s decision to do away with the three percent export tax on fish imposed last year, saying it would have destroyed the local fishing industry if it was imposed.
