The State Fishery Agency is considering privatization of Ukraine’s ocean fishing vessels. The agency’s head Yarema Kovaliv announced this in a statement, UBR reports.
"It is currently being considered as only one of several proposals. Together with the fishing industry, we are trying to find options for financing the program for reforming the sector. The options include attracting investment in construction of new fishing vessels for inland waters and the Azov and Black Sea basin," Kovaliv said.
Kovaliv was talking about possible privatization of four large vessels of the factory trawler type, which are currently fishing in the world’s oceans. Foreign companies have chartered these vessels since 2004, i.e. their entire catches belong to these foreign companies. Last year alone, Ukraine was able to earn an income from their charter, having managed, with great difficulty, to avert the risk of alienation the ocean trawlers because of debt, writes UBR.
The two vessels (Ivan Golubets and Alexei Slobodchikov) were launched in 1991. The other two vessels – Captain Rusak (1997) and Professor Mikhail Alexandrov (1999) – are "younger."
According to the deputy director of the Institute of Fish Industry and Sea Ecology, Kostiantyn Demianenko, the total cost of the vessels (calculated based on the Discounted Cash Flow method) is about USD 16 million. If the value of the vessels is calculated based on the Comparable Transaction method, the amount will be much less. "Trawlers like the Pulkovo Meridian are not in great demand. They have never been modernized because the cost of replacing the fish factory, the freezing equipment, and engines is much higher than their sale value of USD 1.5-3 million each," said Ivan Eyinsson-Esturland, a ship broker with Atlantic Shipping (Denmark).
Decommissioning of the vessels is beginning gradually, and their sale for scrap will not generate more than USD 1 million per vessel.
At the same time, according to Pavel Shevchenko, a representative of the Fiskerstrand Group (Norway), the cost of the company’s new fishing vessels is in the range from EUR 2-3 million to EUR 25-28 million.
