Hanoi, Oct. 15 -- Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha has directed the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment to urgently finalise and submit to the Prime Minister an emergency action plan to implement the European Commission's (EC) recommendations on combating illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, in preparation for the EC's fifth inspection mission.

Chairing the 17th meeting of the national steering committee on IUU fishing prevention on October 14, the Deputy PM underscored the need to complete a comprehensive, unified, and multipurpose national fisheries database to serve multiple agencies. He assigned Viettel to take the lead in developing a data management software model, while ministries, sectors, and localities were...