As demand for fish in St. Vincent and the Grenadines increases, the Government is making a significant investment in the fisheries industry.
According to Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves, USD $4 million will be put towards the purchase of commercial fishing vessels, as well as the hiring of captains to facilitate training of local fishermen.
Minister Gonsalves made the disclosure and recent press conference, where he discussed the type of vessels that will be utilized.
“There are some industrial vessels that cost up to USD $800,000 and those can harvest, in a year, 120,000 pounds of lobster during season. And there are some medium style vessels which are not the industrial type. They cost about $300,000, they can do a very good mix; 70,000 pounds of lobster, another 100,000 pounds of tuna and snapper.” He said.
Gonsalves says that each vessel will hold between five and ten crew members.
Minister Gonsalves goes on to discuss the number of boats the Government hopes to purchase as well as compensation for fishermen that take participate in training.
“We hope to get about six boats within this money, maybe a little more depending on how many large ones and how many medium ones you get.
We hire experienced captains, we compensate the local Vincentians well for working and learning on the boat and then eventually when we’ve paid off these boats, and these boats will pay themselves off very quickly because of the amount of demand that we currently have in the economy” Minister Gonsalves said.
The Finance Minister says the new vessels will be leased to local fishers and then money will be reinvested in order to expand the fleet.
“We allow local fishers to lease these boats or use these boats and we reinvest that four million dollars to get additional boats, so we will keep rotating this investment and as we pay off one set of boats, we lease them cheaply to local fishers and get some more boats to expand the capacity of the fleet” he said.
