Ho Chi Minh City (VNA) – A team from the Ministry of National Defence’s Steering Committee for Combating Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing has checked on measures to prevent IUU fishing in Ho Chi Minh City.
This formed part of a month-long nationwide campaign since August 15 to boost law enforcement and push for the European Commission to lift its “yellow card” warning on Vietnamese seafood exports.
Leading the inspection team, Colonel Bui Yen Tinh, Deputy Director General of the Department of Operations under the Ministry of National Defence, said the nationwide inspections, directly headed by the Ministry of National Defence, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Justice, demonstrate comprehensive coordination to tighten discipline and strictly deal with violations.
The inspections mark a shift from the previous approach of relying mainly on administrative monitoring to inter-agency law enforcement, he said. Their findings will serve as a basis for completing a comprehensive report by the end of September for submission to the EC in early October, allowing the commission to consider conducting an on-site inspection.
Bui Minh Thanh, Vice Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee and head of the municipal steering committee for combating IUU fishing, said the peak campaign offers an opportunity for the city to review all outstanding issues in the work and resolve them decisively.
He asked all relevant agencies and individuals to closely coordinate with the inspection team and provide the necessary information and documents. Municipal authorities will mobilise their entire apparatus for the work while clearly assigning responsibilities to each individual and head of agency, contributing to efforts to have the "yellow card" warning removed and promote sustainable fisheries development.
At a working session at Cat Lo Fishing Port in Phuoc Thang ward, the team focused on identifying outstanding issues and determining whether they resulted from objective factors such as incomplete mechanisms and policies, or subjective factors, including lax or ineffective implementation at the grassroots level. It also sought to clarify responsibilities at both central and local levels to identify root causes and propose solutions.
The team’s working groups conducted field inspections at fishing ports and border guard checkpoints, cross-checking actual conditions and data against five core EC recommendations. These covered control of vessel registration, inspection, vessel movement data, sanctions, seafood traceability, and software for fisheries management.
The team will consolidate and analyse the findings, assess compliance and discrepancies, identify violations and work out remedial measures.
As of August 31, all 4,426 fishing vessels in Ho Chi Minh City had their data fully updated on the national fisheries database (VNFishbase). Among vessels of 15 metres or more, 99.1% (2,141 vessels) were equipped with vessel monitoring systems (VMS). No fishing vessel from the city has been found infringing foreign waters since the beginning of 2026, according to the municipal steering committee for combating IUU fishing./.
