Guinea-Bissau wants to renegotiate a fishing agreement with the European Union to get more funds from allowing European ships to trawl its coast. A 2007 accord offers licenses to as many as 37 vessels to fish a 54,000 square-kilometer (20,850 square-mile) zone for 7 million euros ($9.9 million) a year.
As per the information available the agreement is going to expire in June and after that Guinea-Bissau will ask the EU to increase the annual royalty to “a fair amount” of about 11 million euros. Virginia Pires Correia, director-general of the Fisheries Ministry, informed the media saying that this country can’t advance without optimizing its fishing sector.
She also said that the cancellation of the country’s external debt in December will enable the country to turn down an offer that the government feels is unjust. According to IMF there is $1.2 billion in Guinea-Bissau’s debt in December and the Paris Club of creditors erased an additional $256 million earlier this month. Guinea-Bissau, with a population of 1.6 million people, is one of the world’s poorest countries. The nation ranks sixth from the bottom of the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index, which measures life expectancy, education and living standards.
