Government financial transfers to the fish harvesting, processing and aquaculture industries Norway 1990 - 2002

Abstract

This report investigates and quantifies Norwegian governmental financial transfers (GFT) to primarily the fish harvesting industry, but also the fish processing and aquaculture industries. Focus is on the period 1990 to 2002. The data sources for this report are mainly public accounts of the Ministry of Fisheries, that channelled the bulk of support measures. We also rely heavily on a set of data on the transfer of funds from the Industrial and Regional Development Fund (SND). Finally, annual reports from the Norwegian Fisheries Bank (NFB) have been employed. For fish harvesting, support has been divided in four categories, according to purpose: revenue enhancement, social measures, capital support and intermediate measures. In addition to these, tax exemptions on fuel oil and provision of general services to the industry is discussed. The support for all four categories have shown a sharp decline, particularly from 1991 to 1993, but the trend has continued in the succeeding years. The main factors behind this development has been international obligations from the agreement on the European Economic Area (EEA), increased profitability and government strategy to make the industry self-sustained. Total support has gone down from about 1,100 million Norwegian kroner (NOK) in 1991 to about 250 million NOK in 2001. In 2002 it again fell sharply to about 140 million NOK. These figures exclude tax exemptions on fuel and the provision of general services. Using the NFB annual reports and the SND database, capital support was investigated further, focusing on which vessel groups have received support for this purpose. The results clearly show the SNDs strategy to prioritize large, multi-purpose coastal vessels. Data restricted the study on processing and aquaculture to the period 1994 to 2002. Support for aquaculture amounts to considerably less at about 47 million NOK in 2002, but has shown the opposite trend compared to fish harvesting. This probably corresponds to the continuous high growth of this sector during this period. Aquaculture support mainly consisted of investment grants, but also partial financing of development projects has been important. Support for fish processing increased from about 76 million NOK in 1994 to about 170 million in 1998. This later fell to about 70 million NOK in 2002.