The Marshall Islands Service Corporation, an off-shoot of the Bank of Marshall Islands, has hired the government’s former fisheries director Danny Wase as a consultant to help locate a joint venture partner and manage a soon-to-be-launched purse seine fishing operation.
“It’s time for us as resource owners to participate in the fishing industry,” Wase said in an interview Tuesday. “License fees (for foreign vessels) bring peanuts compared to what the fishing countries make.”
“This is an important project,” said corporation president and CEO Patrick Chen, who is also president of the bank. “We need to get into fishing to bring money into the Marshall Islands.”
The corporation’s move comes as island fishing nations are flexing their muscles demanding a bigger piece of the $3 billion industry that largely benefits distant water fishing nations.
Wase said he and Chen recently spent time meeting with fishing companies in Taiwan, Japan and S. Korea. “There is a lot of interest in joint venturing with us,” he said.
Fishing company owners in Taiwan “are particularly showing a lot if interest,” he said, but added: “We’re looking at all options.” The Marshall Islands maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and one large Taiwan fishing company, Koo’s Fishing Company, has flagged its fleet of purse seiners in this western Pacific nation.
The preferred option is to buy a new purse seiner, Wase said. The cost for these high-tech vessels is about $15 million, he said, adding that the plan is to get a JV partner to kick in half of the purchase cost.
Twenty years ago, the Marshall Islands government tried unsuccessfully to kick start a locally-run commercial fishing industry by buying purse seiners and long-line fishing boats. Wase believes that there is a significant difference between the government-funded fishing operations in the 1980s — which failed — and the service corporation’s current plan. “During the previous fishing ventures, management was overseas so we really didn’t know what was happening,” he said. “With this, we’ll control it locally, so we’ll know the costs and the amount of sale proceeds.”
Chen said the plan will provide jobs and spin-off benefits to the local economy.
Wase said it will take 12-to-18 months to build a new vessel once investment partners are secured.
