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To ensure fair and competitive environment

Our Bureau

Kolkata, July 10

The Mumbai-based Western India Shippers’ Association (WISA) has urged the Shipping Ministry to initiate steps for an early repeal of the present anti-trust immunity to liner shipping conferences.

“The withdrawal of anti-trust immunity enjoyed by the liner shipping conferences is urgently needed to ensure that the shippers can operate in a fair and competitive environment in the ocean freight segment without the cartelistic, even quasi-cartelistic, influence exerted by the liner conference system,” Mr S.R.L. Narasimhan, Secretary, WISA, has stated in a communication to Mr A.K. Mohapatra, the Shipping Secretary.

“The situation in India is particularly critical in the absence of any statute to oversee the monopolistic manipulation by the services providers in the shipping industry”.

The WISA Secretary has drawn the attention of the Shipping Secretary to the letter written in this regard by the Competition Commission to the Shipping Ministry in April. In the letter, the Commission has urged the ministry not only to prevent the shipping lines from deciding on the freight rates unilaterally but also to advise them not to adopt non-competitive practices.

The global shippers’ demand for withdrawal of anti-trust immunity enjoyed by the shipping lines, it has been pointed out, has received support from the OECD, Australian Productivity Commission and European Commission and others, so much so that the European Commission, based on the recommendations of the OECD and also its own findings, issued an order in October 2006, making it clear that the liner conferences operating to and from Europe would not have the immunity from October 2008. Japan, Korea and Singapore too, are keeping a close watch on the situation.

The global shippers are represented by European Shippers Council, Asian Shippers Council and Global Shippers’ Forum. The Indian shippers, under the umbrella of ASCOBIPS (Associations of Shippers Councils of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka), are represented at Asian Shippers Council which again is the founder-member of the Global Shippers’ Forum.

WISA has also sent a detailed note to the Shipping Ministry explaining how various logistics service providers in the maritime sector, with encouragement from the shipping lines enjoying the anti-trust immunity, indulge in unfair trade practices. The draft STP Bill 2007 also takes note of these practices.

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