BarentsNews.com

The Russian government has declared plans to allot coastal regions part of the revenues collected from auction sales of fishing quotas.

However, the system of distributing these assets developed by the Ministry of Finance is absolutely unfair, governor of the Murmansk region Yuri Yevdokimov believes.

He claims this scheme, under which the Russian Far East regions are particularly favoured, is discriminatory towards Murmansk.

Indeed, the Murmansk region’s share in the planned allocations is the smallest (0.37%), while its contribution to the auction quotas yield is far not the least. For comparison: the Primorsky Krai is to get 7.77% of the total revenues in 2003, Khabarovsk region – 4.39%, Kamchatka region – 4.28%.

Such figures have been outlined in the federal law on the state budget for 2003.

Governor Yevdokimov stated his objections in the letters addressed to the Ministry of Economic Development, State Fisheries Committee and to federal lawmakers. He suggested that the allocation rates should be calculated on the basis of each region’s contribution to the total revenues obtained by the state that is how much a particular region has paid for the use of purchased fishing quotas.