Fisheries Act 1996
Status quo and problem
Commercial fishers are required to balance their catch with Annual Catch Entitlement (ACE), as part of the Quota Management System (QMS). If, at the end of a fishing year, they have not acquired enough ACE to balance against their catch they will incur a debt in the form of an invoice for annual deemed values. End of year balancing (comparison of catch vs ACE) occurs approximately 20 days after the end of the fishing year. On the 15th day after the end of a fishing year however the ACE register is closed, meaning that fishers are no longer able to transfer ACE and their ACE holdings at that point in time become fixed.
The majority of fishers manage to balance their catch within the required timeframes. However, since the introduction of the ACE balancing regime in 2001 there have been a number of cases where, for various administrative reasons, planned ACE transfers have failed to take place. In these cases, such failures only surface after the ACE register has closed, at which stage fishers are precluded from making additional ACE transfers to rectify the errors. The fishers have then incurred an annual deemed value debt even though they had intended to comply with the law. In this type of situation most fishers have to pay the debt so as to prevent their commercial fishing permit from being suspended. Currently there are no provisions in the
Fisheries Act 1996 (the Act) to allow this type of situation to be rectified.
In absence of statutory authority, the Minister of Fisheries has progressed requests from fishers to seek relief from the position in which they have found themselves. For a case to be progressed the request for catch balancing relief must meet a set of criteria jointly approved by the Ministers of Finance and Fisheries. However, this is a protracted and cumbersome administrative process.
Objectives
To ensure that the catch balancing regime is fair, efficient and effective.
Preferred option
The preferred option is to amend the Act to allow requests from commercial fishers for catch balancing relief to be considered by the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Fisheries.
Amendments to the Act would put in place:
- a limited ability for fishers to make a request to the Chief Executive for catch balancing relief and for the ACE transfer to be recognised after the 15th day following the end of a fishing year.
- A set of criteria that must be met before the Chief Executive can approve such a request
Upon approval, commercial fishers would be considered to have balanced their catch against ACE despite the requirement for all ACE transfers to be registered before the close of the 15th day after the end of a fishing year.
These changes would remove the perception that the Government is revenue gathering by taking advantage of minor administrative errors and would introduce an element of fairness to situations where invoices for debts have been issued although the sustainability of a stock has not been threatened. It would mitigate the burdens of firms arising out of legislation.
Consultation
The New Zealand Seafood Industry Council and Commercial Fisheries Services Limited have both indicated their support for the proposal.
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