On November 18, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha - Deputy Head of the National Steering Committee on combating illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing chaired the 22nd meeting of the Steering Committee, connecting online with 21 coastal provinces and cities.
At the meeting, a representative of the Ministry of Public Security said that the Ministry has directed the Public Security of 21 coastal localities to update information on fishing vessels and ship owners in the national population database (VNeID), and at the same time check the security and safety of the data system.
However, the connection between the fishing vessel management system of the Ministry of National Defense, the Department of Fisheries and Fisheries Control (Ministry of Agriculture and Environment) and VNeID is not yet complete due to not fully meeting technical standards, security and information security.
At the meeting, leaders of An Giang and Nghe An provinces reported on the handling of fishing vessels violating VMS outages and violating foreign waters; recommended a mechanism to ensure timely information and data transmission from the central to local levels, serving the management and handling of violations for fishing vessels from 24m or more; reviewed the implementation of periodic reports on IUU to the National Steering Committee.
The Deputy Prime Minister requested the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment to update regulations on decentralization of management of fishing vessels of 24m or more from the central to local levels, especially the authority to sanction administrative sanctions, monitor and manage data when amending and supplementing Decree No. 37/2024/ND-CP amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree No. 26/2019/ND-CP detailing a number of articles and measures to implement the Law on Fisheries.
Regarding the national fisheries database, the Deputy Prime Minister directed the urgent completion of the project to build a synchronous, unified, interconnected, and shared national fisheries data system before December 31, ensuring that the data is "correct, complete, clean, and alive" and fully serving the management, traceability and monitoring of fishing vessels, "clearly delegating authority to each subject, including the people, to access and declare".
The Ministry of Agriculture and Environment is assigned to preside over and coordinate with technical experts to build the architecture, functions and delegation of authority of the system.
The Deputy Prime Minister assigned the Government Inspectorate to review all legal tools and sanctions for handling administrative violations of IUU fishing, select a number of localities to inspect and guide to handle 100% of backlog cases.
Localities are required to review fishing vessels, ensure that each vessel has its own data set, control vessels that are qualified to operate, revoke expired or unqualified vessel licenses, and implement measures to support fishermen.
Regarding port management, localities coordinate with the Ministry of National Defense and the Border Guard to determine qualified fishing ports, support private fishing ports in completing procedures, aiming to automate the registration and certification process of the origin of exploited aquatic products.
In the long term, ministries, branches and localities need to evaluate the livelihood transformation for fishermen, build sustainable fisheries policies, link reasonable exploitation with the supply capacity of nature, while promoting high-tech seafood farming offshore and cooperating in seafood exploitation in international waters.
