The central province of Quang Ngai will have the biggest steel vesselever in the coming time, to provide logistics services for fishingvessels operating at sea.

The Bank for Agricultureand Rural Development (Agribank)’s Quang Ngai branch will provide a 20billion VND (952,380 USD) loan to the project under a credit contractinked on December 10 with the ship’s future owner, the Ly Son FisheriesJoint Stock Company.

This is the first deal on building logistics service ships in the province.

The ship, 45.6m long and 7.5m wide, costs 25 billion VND (1.19 million USD) in total.

Itcan reach a speed of 12 nautical miles per hour while carrying 680tonnes of seafood and 50 tonnes of necessaries to supply offshorefishing ships. It will also be equipped with a processing line.

Theship is being under construction at the Vietnam Fishery MechanicalShipbuilding Joint Stock Company in the northern port city of Hai Phongand expected to be launched in the second quarter of 2015.

Thebuilding of the steel ship is in line with the Government’s Decree 67,which provides a full, systematic and synchronous set of basic policiesto encourage fishermen building high-capacity steel ships capable offishing offshore.

Under this decree, Quang Ngai plans tobuild 189 new vessels for fishing and logistic services by 2016 at anestimated cost of 1.6 trillion VND (76.19 million USD). Over 1.4trillion VND (66.66 million USD) is expected to come from bank loans andlocal fishermen will dole out 200 billion VND (9.4 million USD).-VNA