Deputy Director of the Da Nang City Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Phan Van My added that in the long term, Da Nang City will encourage offshore fishing and implement methods to protect the sustainable growth of this resource.

Vice Chairman Le Ba Ky of the People’s Committee of Quynh Lap Commune in Nghe An Province shared his locality’s proposal about establishing a large-scale seafood processing area to avoid value loss due to long-distance transportation or raw seafood trading. The province has also approved an investment project worth VND2.4 trillion ($96.2 million) to develop necessary infrastructure for logistics services for the fishing industry.

Binh Dinh Province now owns three fishing ports and two anchorage areas covering thousands of hectares. Until 2025, the province will continue to pour money into two more anchorage areas in De Gi and Tam Quan. The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Binh Dinh Province is launching the project ‘Exploiting, preserving, purchasing, and exporting tuna in a chain’, supported by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Phu Yen Province has long been considered the birthplace of tuna fishing in Vietnam with an annual output of 4,000 tonnes. It has lately signed a collaboration agreement with Kiyomura Group in hope of applying the Japanese model of introducing tuna products in high-class auction sessions. The province is also working with foreign partners like Japan for tuna fishing technology transfers to meet exporting requirements.

Director Tran Van Phuc of the Binh Dinh Province Department of Agriculture and Rural Development said that many offshore fishing vessels used to cross boundaries into foreign sea bodies.

Aware of that, the provincial People’s Committee has directed the Border Guard Command of the province to cooperate with relevant units to strictly punish any law offenses. The functional agencies also withdraw the fishing licenses of law-breaking fishing ships while publicly announcing the list of these ships as a warning. A similar warning is sent to leaders of communes or wards that have law-violating fishing ships.

“Thanks to these strong measures, since the end of 2023, no law offenses have been detected. The Hoai Nhon fleet with more than 2,300 offshore fishing ships even become the model in fighting against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU). No fishing vessels from the province enter foreign waters without permission”, said Director Phuc.

Likewise, in Thanh Hoa Province, functional units are checking for IUU violations. Vice Chairman of the People’s Committee of Thanh Hoa Province Le Duc Giang has clearly directed that if a fishing boat is operating without observing regulations and affecting the efforts of the province in removing the EC’s yellow card, all related individuals and organizations will receive corresponding punishments.

Da Nang City is maintaining the state of having no fishing vessels going into foreign sea areas without permission, losing contact and monitoring signals for more than 10 consecutive days, or breaking regulations on seafood traceability. To contribute to the effort of removing the EC’s yellow card, the city trying to introduce support policies for the establishment of models to increase the value of seafood in consumption.

With a strong determination to remove the EC’s yellow card in 2024, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang has just asked that relevant ministries, state agencies, and the People’s Committees of coastal localities focus on adopting practical solutions so that by April 2024, there will have been no ships fishing in foreign sea bodies without permission.