The Cabinet of Ministers is launching a pilot program to sell fishing rights in nature reserves through Prozorro

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has adopted a resolution launching a pilot project that introduces a unified digital mechanism for the commercial harvesting of aquatic biological resources within the territories of the nature reserve fund. The new decision applies exclusively to those protected areas where such activities are officially permitted under the current regulations and management regimes of the protected areas. 

This was reported by the press service of the Ministry of Economy, Environment, and Agriculture. The main goal of these changes is to completely eliminate legislative loopholes and make the allocation of fishing rights transparent through open auctions.

The new model provides for the auctioning of rights to the special use of aquatic biological resources in nature reserves via the “Prozorro.Sales” electronic trading system. At the same time, permitted catch volumes will be approved by the Ministry of Economy in consultation with the State Fisheries Agency, which will also be responsible for directly conducting the auctions and concluding contracts with the winners. All current operations—from maintaining a catch log to generating accounting receipts with daily reporting—will be recorded in the state electronic system “eFishing.” In addition, a mandatory fee for the special use of water resources in protected areas is being introduced for the first time, which will be directed directly to local community budgets for each unit of resource harvested.

Deputy Minister Taras Vysotsky emphasized that the creation of a unified digital system means establishing transparent rules for business, minimizing corruption risks, and ensuring real control over the preservation of biodiversity. The relevant ministry expects that this experiment will allow for the complete systematization of data on actual catch volumes. In the long term, digitization should put an end to illegal poaching under the guise of protected status and create clear European conditions for the operation of the legal fishing industry.