The Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) has delivered more than $20 million in savings to the Commonwealth fishing industry since 2005-06.
Since the early 1990s AFMA has recovered some of the costs of fisheries management through charging owners of fishing concessions. Fisheries management costs include data collection, monitoring and research, determining sustainable catch levels, implementing fishing rules and regulations and making sure that the rules are followed.
AFMA has continuously improved the efficiency of its fisheries management and at the same time employed the best available science to support sustainable fisheries. This has been achieved through the combined hard work of AFMA, the fishing industry and scientists.
In 2009, AFMA provided an undertaking to the fishing industry that it would keep recovered costs at, or below, 2005-06 CPI adjusted budgets. AFMA has met this undertaking and in doing so has saved the fishing industry a cumulative amount of $22.5m since 2009-10. Over this time, cost recovery has varied between 4-5 per cent of gross value of production (GVP).
Since 2005-06 AFMA has implemented the Commonwealth Fishery Harvest Strategy Policy, Ecological Risk Management and improved protected species management. Importantly, the most recent ABARES fishery status reports showed that for a second year in a row no solely Commonwealth managed fishery is subject to overfishing!
The chart below shows AFMA cost recovered levies from 2005-06 onwards, including the CPI adjusted figure and the total amount saved to the fishing industry. The difference between levies AFMA recovers from industry and the CPI adjusted levy from 2005-06 continues to increase.
Figure 1: AFMA’s cost recovered levies v CPI adjusted levies
AFMA is not resting on its laurels. We continue to improve efficiency through red-tape reduction, automation and increasing industry accountability. AFMA will also continue working with the fishing industry and other stakeholders to keep costs under control.
For more information about AFMA’s cost recovery arrangements, refer to the 2010 CRIS or the consultation information for the draft 2016 CRIS.