India's Directive on Container Weight Verification Next Week

Directorate General of Shipping will issue guidelines for the Safety of Life at Sea Convention  (SOLAS)  convention on container weight verification next week, said Deepak Shetty, Director General of Shipping, Government of India yesterday in Mumbai.

“By July 1, 2016, we have to put the regulation in place and the file has come to our table and the circular will be issued by Monday or Tuesday. We will be one of the first few countries on a task as daunting as this,” Shetty said delivering his key note address at a conference on `Ease of doing business’ organised by Mumbai and Nhava Sheva Ship Agents Association.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has amended SOLAS that seeks verification of container weight and holds the shipper responsible for it effective July 1, 2016. After this date, it would be a violation of SOLAS to load a packed container onto a vessel if the vessel operator and marine terminal operator do not have a verified container weight.

Speaking on the Solas convention on overweight container, Captain Vivek Anand, President of Mumbai and Nhava Sheva Ship Agents Association, said, “Overweight containers have dubious distinction of playing a role in the breakup and subsequent beaching of vessels due to mis-declaration by exporters. `Back to town’ procedures for containers which are found to be mis-declared or outside the weight tolerance should be simplified. Whilst there are no penalties involved, if the container is not loaded on the vessel, it will be an additional cost to the shipper and therefore strict compliance should be effective from day 1.”

Later speaking on the subject of Ease of doing business, Shetty pointed out the number of laws that have been repealed over the past two years and the proposed Merchant Shipping Bill is expected to simplify it further.

“The draft Merchant Shipping bills is expected to rationalise from 25 parts to 16 parts and the number of sections being reduced from 581 to 217 as part of a conscious and calibrated move. The new bill is expected to be passed by March 2017,” Shetty said.

Setting the tone for the conference, Captain Anand said, “India has moved from 134 ranked to 130th over the past one year, but we may not be able to reach to our coveted target among the top 50 countries if we do not address the Nitti-gritty issue. However, by implementing the Port or (cargo) community system which has been initially been raised 15 years ago by the Indian maritime fraternity will surely go a long way to ease the way we do business.”

Indian ports being 3-5 times more expensive in terms of tariff compared to ports in developed countries, implementation of Port Community System will bring in 60% more efficiency and reduce logistics and transaction cost by 20=30% and eradicate corruption by 100%, Captain Anand added.