The Hindu Business Line : Shipping cos bring down detentions at foreign ports, boost image

THE image of Indian ships in foreign ports is set to get a shade better. With Indian vessels registering a lesser number of detentions in the second half of 2004, India will be soon getting out of the Black List to emerge in the Grey List under the Paris MoU. Different MoUs categorise the quality of ships under Black, Grey and White lists.

India has been in the Black List in the medium risk category under Paris MoU, Grey List under Tokyo MoU and the `Watch List' of the US Coast Guard (USCG) in the wake of the detention ratio climbing higher than the overall average in 2003-04.

The Directorate-General of Shipping, which had cracked the whip on Indian ship owners to reduce detention of their vessels in foreign ports last year, is now initiating measures to ensure that 2005 is a `detention-free' year. "We want to get out of the Black and Grey lists of different MoUs at the earliest," an official with the DG Shipping said.

In fact, the increasing trend of detention of Indian ships in 2003 and early 2004 had been causing concern in the domestic shipping industry, as it was threatening to smear the image of Indian flag vessels.

If 2003 was considered a `bad year' on this score, the beginning of 2004 was worse, as there was a spurt in detentions of Indian flag vessels in different foreign ports under the Port State Control (PSC) regulations. The first four months of 2004 saw as many as 10 Indian ships getting detained, while the next 4 months registered four more detentions, the number reaching the total detentions in the whole of 2003.

However, the measures initiated by DGS saw a marked improvement in the trend, with the remaining period of the year recording no detentions. The 14 detentions last year include six vessels under Indian Ocean MoU, four each under Paris and Tokyo MoUs and two under the US Coast Guard (two of the vessels have been shown in both the list of Tokyo and Indian Ocean MoUs).

"Apparently, in the ship owners' quest to squeeze maximum economic mileage out of the freight market boom in the last few months, good house keeping in ships had taken the backseat, resulting in more detentions," a shipping analyst pointed out.

In an effort to ensure that there are no detentions in this year, the DGS will be implementing a string of measures such as calling back any Indian vessel detained in a foreign port under PSC to the nearest Indian port, restricting any ship that is subjected to two PSC detentions in 12 months to Indian coasts till the ship's condition is improved and mandatory one FSI inspection every year for every Indian flag foreign-going vessel.

Even the domestic shipping companies have launched collective efforts, under the supervision of the DGS, to water down the number of detentions.

"All round efforts are being made by the DGS, in consultation with the industry and the classification societies, to discuss the cause of detentions and to take urgent steps to avoid such detentions so as to improve our country's shipping record," a representative of the Indian National Shipowners Association said.

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