Ester Mabthera
The horse mackerel fishing sector is less enthusiastic about the second auction of fishing quotas for horse mackerel.
Earlier in the year, the government put 26 384 metric tons of horse mackerel on auction to the highest bidder at a minimum price set for the freezer quota is N$3 500 per metric ton, while the wet fish quota is set at N$1 000 per metric ton.
Last week, the Ministry of Finance and Public Enterprises announced the auction of 13 584 metric tonnes of horse mackerel governmental objective quotas.
Robert Shimooshili, a director at Cavema Fishing, said going on auction this time of the year is not realistic because the sector is already struggling to get good catches.
“It will not work. The auction should be conducted at the beginning of the year, not in the middle of the year. It is winter now, and this time everyone in the industry is struggling to get good production,” he said.
Harold Kaune, Hodago Fishing Pty Ltd’s general manager, suggested that the quota be given to businesses that already have quotas.
“Offer it to the companies pro rata to the quota that they get, and with an upset, make an offer at the beginning of the year. Now it’s really late to run around with quotas. Catches are very poor in winter, and if you discount those months of poor performance, one can only estimate that a company will have one or two months to catch the fish before the season ends, and that is not possible with such a large quota,” he said.
The general manager of Princess Brand Processing (PBP), Adolf Burger, added that the other challenge the sector is currently facing is a shortage of space in the cold storage facilities.
“The industry has an overcapacity of vessels. Most of the vessels that were licensed in the country last year are flooding the market with fish, and they have also dropped prices, which has led to this problem,” he said.
The sector added that the auction upset price by the government has also led to an increase in price for them to buy quotas from quota holders who have no operations.
Last year, the government-owned fishing company Fishcor also struggled to sell its quota into the market.
The upset price for Horse Mackerel rose from a minimum price of N$3,000 per metric ton of freezer fish and N$750 per metric ton of wet fish in 2021 to N$3,571 per mt for freezer fish and N$1,000 per mt for wet fish in 2024.
The finance ministry spokesperson, Wilson Shikoto, said the fish was what was left from the February auction.
“The first Horse Mackerel auction raised a total of N$32.9 million from the sale of 12,800 MT, inclusive of N$5,000 raised from application fees. A residual of 12,584 MT was recorded, which is now on offer,” he said.
A similar event happened in 2021, and the government sold the 27 300-tonne residual fish to the Democratic Republic of the Congo at a price of N$84 million.
