administers fisheries policy, maintains and 

 protects fishery stocks, coordinates research 

 activities, and issues regulations. Latvia's 

 fisheries management was under the 

 jurisdiction of the Latvian Ministry of 

 Maritime Affairs until August 1993, when it 

 was turned over to the Ministry of 

 Transportation. Lithuania's fisheries 



management is handled by the Fisheries 

 Department in the Ministry of Agriculture. 



1. Problems of independence 



The fishing industries in all three Baltic 

 states faced a real crisis when they became 

 independent. Their — by now substantial — 

 fishing industries suddenly found themselves 

 without the infrastructure and sales network 

 which they had relied on over the past 4 

 decades. The new Baltic state-owned 

 fishing companies lost maintenance support 

 in fdreign ports, centralized marketing 

 agents, and, most importantly, cheap, 

 subsidized Soviet diesel oil. 



The Baltic fishing companies have also 

 lost the large Soviet internal marketing 

 network. Before 1991, the Baltic fish- 

 processing plants simply shipped their 

 fishery products to any Soviet domestic 

 trade organization that wanted them. The 

 Russians now consider such deliveries to be 

 imports from a foreign country. The same 

 goes for exports to Ukraine, Belarus, and 

 other parts of the Commonwealth. Besides 

 a specific order for fishery commodities, 

 customs papers have to be made out, duties 

 (if any) paid and, most importantly, payment 

 must be received. Fortunately, the Baltic 

 states have maintained their relationship with 

 the principal Soviet fishery trading 

 company, SOVRYBFLOT, which now 

 operates as a Russian holding company. 

 Various enterprises in the three Baltic 



countries own shares in SOVRYBFLOT: the 

 Estonian state companies, ESTRYBPROM 

 and ESTRYBKHOZSOIUZ (Estonian 

 Cooperative Fisheries Union), hold two and 

 one shares respectively; the Latvian state- 

 owned Riga Trawler and Refrigeration Fleet 

 and the Liepaja Fishing Fleet Base each 

 holds two shares; and the Jura state-owned 

 fishing fleet of Lithuania holds eight shares.' 



The most severe problem resulting from 

 independence is how to obtain diesel fuel. 

 In the Soviet period, the subsidized fuel, 

 delivered by the Soviet authorities, 

 represented only about 10-15 percent of the 

 operating costs of Baltic fishing vessels. 

 Now, at world prices, fuel represents 

 anywhere from an estimated 50-70 percent 

 of operating costs. The availability of diesel 

 fuel is not much of a problem, the problem 

 is its price and the fact that it has to be paid 

 for with foreign currencies which all three 

 Baltic countries currently lack. Some 

 bartering was attempted, but it reportedly 

 was not very successful. 



2. International agreements 



Baltic fishermen used to have access to 

 a large number of 200-mile zones under the 

 59 bilateral fishery agreements which were 

 concluded by the former Soviet Union. 

 After they won their independence in 

 September 1991, such access rights were no 

 longer available. Each of the three Baltic 

 countries must now negotiate its own 

 agreements for access to fisheries off foreign 

 countries. In view of their inadequate 

 diplomatic leverage and the limited number 

 of diplomatic posts which the Baltic states 

 maintain, this has proven difficult. For 

 example, the Baltic fleets used to fish as 

 Soviet-registered vessels in the Moroccan 

 200-mile zone where the former USSR in 



