Bigger catches of tuna in Seychelles have led to an increase in the financial help from the European Union (EU) towards developing their own tuna fisheries.

The protocol of the Fisheries Partnership Agreement (FPA) was amended last year and the new level of aid from the EU – up to €5,355,000 a year from €4,125,000 – came into force on June 18.

This followed the signing in Brussels the previous day by Seychelles’ ambassador Barry Faure and Mary Tovsak Pleterski, representing the European Council, of a document allowing the amendment to take place.

The amount of tuna caught – the so-called “reference tonnage” on which the EU contribution is based – increased from 55,000 to 63,000 tons.

This meant the new level of aid has gone up to €4,095,000 a year, plus €1,260,000 a year towards support for Seychelles’ fisheries policy.

The Seychelles-EU fisheries partnership was negotiated in 2004 to replace the previous bilateral fisheries agreement between the two parties and is the largest tuna fisheries protocol of its kind ever signed by the EU. It covers the period from January 2005 to January 2011.

FPAs are the EU’s new generation of bilateral fisheries agreements. Their main purpose is to provide for better economic, financial, technical and scientific cooperation in the fisheries sector with a view to conserving resources and exploiting them in a sustainable way.

The government intends to carry out a comprehensive review of all the fisheries agreements it has concluded so far to ensure Seychelles gets maximum yields from its fishery resources while putting measures in place for sustainable exploitation.