The head of the Administration of Seaports of Ukraine (ASU), Yurii Vaskov, believes that one of the shortcomings of the current legislation is that it does not contain provisions on the operations of fishing ports. Vaskov announced this during a roundtable with the participation of experts and journalists in Odessa, the CFTS correspondent reports.
"The Law on Ports, while being the basis for the major players in the industry, does not cover all the stevedoring companies existing in Ukraine. The sector associated with fishing and river ports completely fall out of it. However, river ports, for example, will have their own law, which will have the same philosophy as the law on seaports," said the head of the ASU.
He stressed that the “so-called fishing ports” rarely perform their declared function because they engage in cargo handling, since they are fully-fledged stevedores. In addition, according to him, they are often located near seaports that fall within the scope of the law that was adopted in 2012. "They live their own lives and create serious competition. This is a big disadvantage because the state should have a uniform policy on companies, depending on their types of operations and not on whether they are subordinate to a particular ministry," said Vaskov.
As reported, 18 seaports and four fishing ports - Ilyichevsk, Sevastopol, Kerch, and Mariupol - operate in Ukraine (the latter lost its handling license in 1996). River ports are under the control of the State Fisheries Agency.
