Which cure for the maritime crisis?
Four government advisors and decision makers representing four global regions were present on Fiata's panel entitled “Moving Forward: What are the Solutions to the Maritime Crisis”, a side event of the Fiata HQ Meeting in Geneva on 20 May 2022. Together, they examined how governments in China, Europe, Africa and USA are addressing disruptions and market structural issues in the maritime supply chain.
While Raïssa-Julie Ada Allogo of the African Union commented that Africa as a region still requires support with capacity building, Henrik Mørch stated that the European Commission was open to exploring whether they could build a case on dominance (as opposed to violations of competition law), focusing on individual shipping companies. The European Commission will be reviewing the carriers’ block exemption from antitrust enforcement “to see whether the basic premise of the exemption still applies.”
Wang Wei, Development Research Centre of the State Council, China, reported that China’s Shanghai shipping exchange has been monitoring rate increases that in some cases exceed the value of goods being exported by Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises. The shipping exchange is consulting with the carriers and encouraging increases in both ocean and rail capacity.
Rebecca F. Dye, FMC, noted the importance of multi-stakeholder dialogue in the logistics sector and added that freight rates and demurrage and detention charges were top concerns. There is also a need for service contracts to have mutually binding commitments.
Dye called for more information transparency, more to be published online, a new commitment to focus on supply chain concerns, and she encouraged all countries to join the USA in this effort. The FMC has been conducting a review of competition and market concentration in the ocean shipping industry, with a report to be released soon. Yet, all the speakers agreed that they had not yet seen evidence of any outright price fixing or illegal collusion by the shipping lines.
Fiata SVP and working group sea chair Jens Roemer commented: 'I am satisfied that demurrage and detention as well as carriers’ haulage practices have been mentioned to be kept in view from the regulatory side, simply because I consider them often to be unfair." (cd)