A hard standing facility is to be built at Qrejten Point in Marsaxlokk which will allow larger vessels to undergo maintenance in Malta, Agriculture and Fisheries Parliamentary Secretary Frans Agius said yesterday.

The facility, costing e2 million, will be largely funded by the EU, which will pay 75 per cent of its cost, he said.

Dr Agius, who was speaking when distributing financial aid to fishermen at the Malta Centre for Fisheries Sciences in Fort San Lucjan, Marsaxlokk, said the government has always striven to be sensitive to fishermen and their livelihood, as it believed in the industry’s future.

He said the financial aid programme for fishing vessels was initiated in July 2002 and was projected to cost around Lm2.6 million. So far, 181 contracts costing Lm1.78 million have been finalised, while yesterday’s 26 payments have settled another 25 contracts. This meant that the government has finalised 206 contracts costing Lm1.8 million. The parliamentary secretary gave an assurance that pending contracts would be processed shortly as another 14 contracts costing Lm50,000 would be paid soon.

With regard to EU funding, Dr Agius said the government had fulfilled its pledges as fishermen have benefited to the tune of Lm1.5 million through the Financial Instrument for Fisheries Guidance (FIFG) 2004-2006.

Dr Agius listed a number of projects which have benefited from the FIFG. The renewal of fishing vessels cost Lm66,000 while the scrapping of three vessels cost Lm148,731. An aquaculture project was granted Lm30,000, while Lm13,115 was paid for the modernisation of six vessels, and Lm6,686 was allocated to marketing and processing projects.

The 2007-2013 FIFG is expected to allocate e8.4 million to Maltese fisheries.

The parliamentary secretary referred to the recent tuna quota allocations granted to Malta in an International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) meeting recently held in Japan. Malta was granted a quota of 355 tonnes of tuna, a marginal increase in the tonnage granted to the country until recently. Dr Agius said this reflected the government’s commitment to a sustainable fishing industry which nonetheless upheld Maltese and Gozitan fishermen’s competitiveness.