Kingdom collects more than $3.8M from fishery
Kingdom collects more than $3.8M from fishery
Cambodia collected over $3.8 million in royalties from the fishery sector in the first nine months of this year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said.
While the report did not provide comparative data for last year, 2016 figures show that the government generated about $3 million in royalties from the sector.
The report does not reveal total revenues from forestry exports, although it shows Cambodia exported a total of 11,030 tonnes of fresh fishery products during the first three quarters of this year – an increase of 200 tonnes from the same period last year. Of this, 3,970 tonnes were processed fishery products.
This year, the government targets to export 20,000 tonnes of fresh fishery products and collect $752,249 from fishery service fees, a marginal $315 decrease from last year.
The report also does not indicate the value of exports but shows that the government collected $321,304 in service fees from the fisheries sector between January and September.
Ministry of Agriculture spokesman Srey Vuthy said sectoral revenue from fisheries and forestry is part of the national budget income and is collected from penalties and service fees from commercial operations.
“Service revenue decreased a bit since illegal fishery crime has decreased, so penalty fees are also down,” said Vuthy, adding that fisheries exports will increase by December after the fishing season.
On the revenues, he said: “Revenue from forestry and fisheries are collected for the national budget. We need to ask the forestry department to get concrete information for comparison.”
The Post reported early this year that despite a ban on timber exports and the government’s repeated declaration that “large-scale” logging has stopped, Vietnamese customs data compiled by watchdog Forest Trends showed a significant increase in the import of Cambodian logs and timber last year.
The data shows that some 163,071 cubic metres of Cambodian logs were exported to Vietnam last year, a 17 per cent increase from the year before, while the value of exports rose 21 per cent to $40 million.
