Ministry allocates Rs. 125 m for deep sea fishing

Anjana Samarasinghe

GRANTS: The Ministry of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources has provided Rs. 99 million to facilitate deep sea fishing under government grants and has allocated Rs. 125 million for this purpose this year.

Additional Secretary (Development) to the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources P. Ranepura told the Daily News that they have granted Rs. 1 million each for 99 fishermen to purchase multi-day boats.

However there were 170 fishermen who qualified for the grants and we have completed providing grants for 99 fishermen so far. During this year we expect to provide grants for others too.

Under this project fishermen could select their boat manufacturer and Ministry will monitor the boat manufacturing process with the manufacturer and provide funds to the manufacturer.

All the boats manufactured under the project needs to be more than 40 feet and could be used for deep sea fishing, he said.