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Indonesian fishermen reject WTO clampdown on subsidies
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Fishermen in Batang, Central Java, discharge their catches in the harbor. (Shutterstock/Maharani Afifah)
T
he Indonesian Traditional Fishermen Association (KNTI) has rejected a World Trade Organization push to prohibit subsidies for problematic fishing practices.
KNTI chairman Dani Setiawan said the fisheries subsidies paid by the Indonesian government should not be abolished, because doing so would negatively affect fishing communities across the country, Kontan reported on Wednesday.
WTO members are wrangling over an agreement that prohibits support for illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, bans support for fishing overfished stocks and ends subsidies for fishing on the unregulated high seas.
Subject to negotiations for years, the agreement gained support from more countries during the WTO’s 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) in Abu Dhabi last week, but it remains far from the minimum 110 countries required for it to enter into force. Jakarta has not conveyed its acceptance so far.
Dani opined that fisheries subsidies should only be abolished for advanced industrial countries where the industry used large-scale, high-tech vessels to actively capture fish in international waters.
In Indonesia, Dani said, many fishermen using traditional boats still needed subsidies, especially to fuel their boats.
He cited a 2021 KNTI study showing that 82 percent of small-scale fishermen had access to subsidized fuel, and decreasing the subsidies based on the WTO proposal would affect their livelihoods.
