>Press Releases Home > Publications and press releases > Press Releases Hong Kong on Course for Another Year at the Top as Shipping Register Tonnage Reaches Record Level In this launch issue of Hong Kong Maritime News, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government's Marine Department Director, Tsui Shung-yiu, talks about the unique changes facing the shipping industry and why Hong Kong has returned to its former glory days: "Hong Kong has always had the enviable reputation of being one of the best shipping centres in the world, a position that we have worked hard to maintain ever since the Hong Kong Shipping Register was formed more than 150 years ago. During the 1990's we enjoyed tremendous success with our Gross Registered Tonnage (GRT), which peaked at 9.096 million in 1996. However, those levels nose-dived immediately after the handover and by November 1997, the figure had dropped to 5.3 million GRT. We have had a mountain to climb since then but I am delighted to report that we are back on track and last month (May) we broke the 9.107 million GRT mark. This puts us within reach of the 10 million GRT target set by the Financial Secretary in his 1999-2000 budget speech. I think we will arrive at this figure towards the end of the year - almost one and a half years ahead of the scheduled date in April 2002. More ships joining our shipping register will benefit not only our shipping industry but also the local economy since this will mean more business opportunities for local companies in insurance, banking, legal and other types of support services that are instrumental to this industry. When our tonnage plummeted we began to study the way we ran the shipping register and decided that the system would have to be re-engineered if we were to regain our position. The reasons why we experienced such a drop were twofold: uncertainty in Hong Kong around the handover and the economic crisis throughout Asia. In April 1999, we introduced a series of measures to improve the quality of the Shipping Register to make it more user-friendly, cost-effective and efficient. These included simplifying our fee structure; re-aligning regulatory and technical requirements to international standards; introducing the Flag State Quality Control (FSQC) system for Hong Kong ships; and streamlining registration procedures. The Asian economic crisis meant many investors were being careful with their budgets so we had to set about ways of attracting them back to Hong Kong and one measure that had an immediate impact was reducing our charges. We also discovered that investor confidence had returned to Hong Kong as people realised that the one country two systems policy was running smoothly and efficiently. We lowered the first time registration fee by 85% and limited the maximum payment to HK$15,000. We also reduced the cost of annual tonnage for ships which now varies from HK$1,500 for 1,000 Net Registered Tonnage (NRT) to a capped payment of HK$100,000 for 31,500 NRT and upwards which resembles a 45% reduction. We have also scrapped a number of minor and miscellaneous charges. In addition, the licence fee for foreign seafarers has been slashed by 76%. The Marine Department has also streamlined its administration procedures allowing ships to be registered in just four hours. Simplified forms can be downloaded from our web site. Help in registration procedures is also offered from a network of nine overseas Hong Kong Economic and Trade offices as well as Chinese diplomatic centres world-wide. We are warehousing data on all of the ships registered in Hong Kong, which forms the backbone of the FSQC system. In the past, we followed the UK's method of inspecting the ship before registration and conducting a survey every five years. While this was a good way of monitoring safety, we realised that over such a lengthy period, anything could happen to a ship. It was also not a particularly cost-effective way of ensuring ship maintenance, especially if the vessel was not in Hong Kong when its survey was due. Add to this the inconvenience to the operator who would see his ship taken out of service while our surveys were conducted. After we looked long and hard at the issues involved we introduced a more comprehensive system that was not only user-friendly and efficient but cost-effective as well. Under the FSQC we will assess the history of the vessel through information held by the classification societies and our counterparts in other countries so we know whether it has a good or bad record. Once this information has been ascertained we will decide if and when to send a surveyor to carry out an inspection. Using our database we are able to identify, each year, those ships with declining quality and if further investigations reveal the ship management company is responsible an FSQC audit of that company will also be carried out. Both inspections and audits are free of charge. However, Hong Kong registered ships detained under Port State Control inspections for serious deficiencies are required to undergo further inspections by the Marine Department at a cost to the ship owner. We have also introduced a blacklisting procedure for those surveyors of classification societies found not to be doing their job to international standards. Since the introduction of FSQC, the Port State Control detention of Hong Kong registered ships has declined from 16 in 1998 to 10 in 1999, an improvement of almost 40%. However, we are continually looking at ways of improvement and I will be spending more and more time visiting local shipping companies for their views on how we can better our register. We already have the hardware in place in terms of the port and terminals, which are well established and looked after by private enterprise but there is definitely more we can do with our software by providing more support services. All of these initiatives are part of our continuous programme to show the industry that Hong Kong is leading the way in world shipping." (Note* Those interested in the Hong Kong Shipping Register are welcome to call our Registrar of Ships at tel. (852) 2852 4383, fax: (852) 2541 8842 or e-mail:hksr@mardep.gcn.gov.hk. User-friendly application forms can be downloaded from our web site at http://www.info.gov.hk/mardep.) Saturday, 24 June 2000
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