Seychelles 2020 FiTI Report the first to be updated using new template |10 August 2022
Seychelles 2020 Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI) Report issued on December 15, 2021 is the first to be updated using a new template designed to be used by all countries that are part of the initiative.
Over recent months, the FiTI International secretariat has been working with a designer to produce a FiTI Report template.
Yesterday Sven Biermann, executive director of the FiTI International secretariat, met with the Minister for Fisheries and the Blue Economy, Jean-François Ferrari at his Maison Collet office to present him with a newly designed copy of the Seychelles’ 2020 FiTI Report.
Seychelles’ 2020 FiTI Report includes a range of important data on fish stocks, access agreements and government subsidies.
The new report template uses several graphs and tables to visualise key data on these areas of Seychelles’ fisheries management, among others, in an appealing and comprehensible manner.
The production of the template forms part of the FiTI’s efforts to support public understanding of how national fisheries are managed.
Fisheries management can be a complex topic often characterised by numerical information sets such as catch, vessel or financial data. It is therefore important to break down such information to allow those with no or little background in the sector to understand and participate in how their government is managing this common resource.
“These annual FiTI Reports not only provide a highly beneficial tool for us by regularly assessing the public availability, accessibility and completeness of information on core aspects of our fisheries sector, but they also complement our existing sources of information, such as the SFA annual reports. With this newly designed FiTI Report, now nobody can say Seychelles’ fisheries are too difficult to understand. I encourage everyone with a stake in the sustainability of our fisheries to read this report and engage in informed debates based on its contents,” Minister Ferrari said during yesterday’s meeting.
For his part Mr Biermann noted that “transparency should not only be seen as the act of providing information in the public domain, but also ensuring that such information allows others to draw reliable conclusions from it and contribute to public debates. We are therefore very happy to roll out this new report template to all countries implementing our internationally-recognised transparency standard. It is very fitting that Seychelles, a leader in global transparency efforts and host to our international secretariat since 2020, becomes the first country to benefit from this template”.
According to Philippe Michaud, the chairperson of Seychelles’ FiTI National Multi-Stakeholder Group, “Seychelles’ next FiTI Report, covering the calendar year 2021, is due for publication before the end of this year. We will certainly utilise this new template from the FiTI international secretariat to ensure that the increased amount of information that is now published online by the government can be easily interpreted and understood”.
The reusable FiTI Report template was financed through PROBLUE, an umbrella 2.0 multi-donor trust fund administered by the World Bank.
Also present at yesterday’s presentation was the principal secretary for the blue economy Kenneth Racombo as well as the principal secretary for fisheries Roy Clarisse.
To access Seychelles’ newly designed 2020 FiTI Report, the public can visit the website of the Seychelles Fishing Authority.
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