SWAKOPMUND - The late auction of governmental objective quotas came back to bite as the government is set to lose out on millions of dollars in revenue during this year’s auction, especially for horse mackerel.

This follows a Cabinet decision taken last Tuesday to re-allocate an ex-gratia governmental objective quota of horse mackerel to 12 companies including the Democratic Republic of Congo, who bought from the government on auction held on 18 June last year.  

The government made N$214 million from the 87 500 metric tons of horse mackerel sold during the auction last year. 

The successful bidders could not catch their quota due to time constraints in organising and coordinating their logistics and legal compliance documents to catch and land their purchased quota. The DRC in October bought the remaining 27 000MT that was not sold during the auction. Fisheries minister Derek Klazen in a press conference held on Friday in Swakopmund said 51 317MT of the quota could not be caught because the auction was held late and the overall change in fishing climates made it difficult for companies to catch.

Late DRC offer 

Klazen on Friday said the DRC offer came very late. Only two months were left before the end of the fishing season. According to him, the DRC requested to catch their quota in 2022.  

“After their offer was considered, the DRC government had to forge agreements with local companies to catch the fish for them. These agreements only materialised in December, right at the end of the fishing season, this did not give the DRC an opportunity to realise the quota they paid for. They, therefore, requested us to assist them in a way that they can get a quota in 2022, as they paid a lot of money for the quota,” Klazen explained.

The Democratic Republic of Congo bought 27 000MT for N$85 million last year but could only catch about 1 000MT, according to online media reports.

Negative impact on revenue

Klazen indicated that about 8 000MT of horse mackerel might only be available for auction this year and that this will indeed negatively impact government’s revenue. 

However, he said the figure is still to be verified by his officials.

“This has a serious impact on our revenue, but as a caring government, we took it in cognisance that people have invested money during the auction. The lateness of the auction as well as other factors beyond our control were a major factor in the government’s decision to award the quotas from this year’s governmental objective quota,” he said.

Based on this, he said Cabinet needed to act fairly and reasonably and met the bidders halfway by awarding a new horse mackerel fishing quota to all the bidders whose quota was not caught during the fishing season of 2021.

“This is a once-off decision. It will not happen again as long as I am a minister. I will not allow it to happen again but it was due to reasons beyond our control and that is why we decided to have the auction for the remaining quota on time.”

According to the Fisheries and Marine Resources Act, fishing quotas cannot be rolled over to the next year, these companies are to make sure that they catch their quotas before the end of the fishing season, 31 December every year. The government for the past two fishing seasons auctioned off its objective quota, making about N$400 million during last year’s auction.

Plan better 

Chairman of the Confederation of Namibian Fishing Associations Matti Amukwa yesterday told New Era the issue clearly shows that proper planning was not done and as such, the bidders cannot be held accountable for a problem they did not cause.

“The ministry must do proper planning and announce the auction as early as possible to give companies ample time to plan properly. The burning issue now is how are we going to account for those quotas issued last year and what are the lessons learned from this?” he asked.

Unionist Daniel Imbili also said government must consult with the unions to make sure that auctions take place smoothly. 

Unions are close to the employees and the companies. Currently, we have a lot of fishermen that still need to be employed and we cannot have re-allocations like this. Even the leftover governmental objective quota should have been on auction already to avoid the same catastrophe from happening again,” he said.