Fishing vessels at present are registered annually and it has become a huge inconvenience to fishermen. They have to travel all the way to Colombo from the hinterlands such as Jaffna, Batticaloa, Ampara and Mannar to get their fishing vessels registered. Hence, the Minister has focused on implementing an alternative program.

Accordingly, fishing vessels will be registered biennially from 2018. Actions are underway to facilitate an online registrations system in this regard.

Also, Minister instructed the Director General of Fisheries to consider the idea of formulating a system to register once in every five years the vessels that will be newly purchased from 2018.  

Currently there are 50,338 fishing vessels in Sri Lanka and 4,218 out of them are multiday fishing vessels while 719 are one day-vessels. 24,028 are outboard engine boats and 1,872 are artisanal vessels with an engine. Vessels without an engine remain to be 19,501.