(Seychelles News Agency) - Seychelles has launched its Fisheries Information Management System (FIMS), aimed at improving access to fisheries information, in terms of accessibility, availability and timeliness.

At the launching ceremony on Monday at the Savoy Seychelles Resort and Spa, the Minister for Fisheries and the Blue Economy, Jean-Francois Ferrari, said in his address that data is a vital component of any modern public administration system.

"This is especially true in the fisheries sector. Accurate and timely information is essential for effective decision-making and management of our fisheries resources. This is where systems such as the FIMS come to our aid," he added.

Ferrari spoke about the numerous benefits of this information and management system.  

"It will help to ensure that our fisheries resources are managed in a sustainable and responsible manner and that the interests of all stakeholders are taken into account. It will also help to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our fisheries management practices, reducing waste, increasing productivity and promoting the long-term viability of our fisheries sector," said Ferrari.

He added that such a system will provide an integrated platform for the collection, analysis, and dissemination of fisheries data, covering everything from fish stock assessments to the monitoring of fishing activities and the management of fishing quotas.

Radley Weber, the chairman of the board of the Seychelles Fishing Authority (SFA), said that system will also facilitate the exchange of fisheries data and information within the Authority, with its partners and the public.

Financed by the SWIOFISH3 programme, a long-term regional programme of the World Bank for sustainable marine fisheries, FIMS was developed by TraSeable Solutions, a Fiji-based company.

The founder of TraSeable Solutions, Kenneth Katafono, said that "the FIMS collates and integrates SFA fisheries data in a single digital platform for us to extract and for all stakeholders to access."

He added that the system is hosted internally at SFA with a standby server in the Amazon Web Services cloud.

The entities that will have data access externally include the Central Bank of Seychelles (CBS), the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), and the Seychelles Ports Authority (SPA). They will have restricted access to FIMS data based on official requests.

The need to make available information in Seychelles' fisheries industry more accessible and transfer it to the public in layman's terms was outlined in the Seychelles 2021 Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI) report.

FiTI said that will allow the information to be used in managing fisheries efficiently and sustainably.

Fisheries is the second top economic contributor for Seychelles, an archipelago in the western Indian Ocean.