March 2, 2020 — China is unleashing a new wave of subsidies to bolster the seafood sector, as it struggles with closed factories and migrant workers stranded far away from their workplaces due to fallout from the COVID-19 coronavirus.
China is waiving taxes and payments to seafood buyers who take up the supply sitting in the country’s aquaculture ponds, and the powerful Export Import Bank has offered up to CNY 1.5 billion (USD 210 million, EUR 195 million) in loans to distant-water fishing firms and processors in Fujian Province as a way to prop up the sector.