COLOMBO: Sri Lanka plans to send a high level team to Brussels on March 30 to hold talks on getting the fishery exports ban imposed by the European Union last year revoked, the Ministry of International Trade said Friday.
Chairman of Seafood Exporters Association of Sri Lanka (SEASL) and Managing Director of Global Sea Foods, Prabhash Subasinghe has said in a statement that the team will conduct a decisive meeting with EU on the fishery ban issue.
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“The outcome will determine our fishery export outlook to Europe in future and we believe the outcome shall be favorable for Sri Lanka,” Subasinghe was quoted in the statement as saying.
The Sri Lankan team shall include members from the Prime Ministerial Task Force on the EU Fishery ban, according to Xinhua news agency.
The European Commission October 2014 proposed to ban imports of fisheries products from Sri Lanka, the second biggest exporter to the bloc, due to Sri Lanka’s failure to demonstrate that it sufficiently addressed illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The ban went into effect from 14 January 2015.
Sri Lanka’s seafood exports were severely hit by the ban and continued to decline since the announcement of the ban in October 2014. In the year 2015, Sri Lanka’s seafood exports declined 35.5% to US$ 163.1 million compared to US$ 252.7 million earned in 2014.
Before the ban Sri Lanka’s fish exports to the European Union made up 68 percent of its total fish exports, which brings in Rs.23 billion (US$ 160 million) annually. The remaining 32% is sent to the United States, Japan and other non-EU countries.
Sri Lanka was one of the biggest exporters to the EU of high value fishery products such as fresh and chilled swordfish, tuna and tuna-like species.
Since the imposition of the ban, the government has taken several steps to address the shortcomings that led to the ban, and an EU technical evaluation team visited Sri Lanka in November to evaluate the progress made in complying with the EU requirements Sri Lanka needs to fulfill to get the ban lifted.
The government said that 95% of the compliance work on the EU Fishery ban had been completed and hoped the EU would revoke its ban this year.
