Regional shipping strong for 2010 after bad year  –  CSA President
PRESIDENT of the Caribbean Shipping Association Mr. Carlos Urriola said the shipping industry in the region has bounced back to even keel after a tumultuous year in 2009, not unlike the year of the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001 which crippled shipping.

“Last year nobody expected. If anybody told me that last year we were going to be losing money I would have said ‘no’; that could not happen,” he said Monday night during a dinner organised by the Shipping Association of Guyana at the Pegasus Hotel in Georgetown.

“It has been the roller coaster ride of a lifetime. What we spent this last year is incredible. The industry lost billions upon billions of dollars in one year. The only thing to [come close to] that is 9/11,” he said, referring to the September 11 (9/11) terrorist attack in the United States.

“Everybody said that it would take ten years to recover, but let me tell you, if you look at the numbers, which industry has lost US$20 billion one year and the next year recovers? The shipping industry…Every shipping line has been able to recover at least to break-even,” Urriola, who hails from Panama, said.

He said that for most companies in the region, when they looked at their balance sheets at the end of 2009, it was found that they were losing money one way or the other. “Things have changed. This business has been very conservative,” he said.

VUVUZELAS & SHIPPING

Giving an example of the vital importance of shipping to various areas of commerce, he said: “One day somebody invented Vuvuzelas in South Africa. The next day somebody decided to manufacture it. We are in the business of trade…of moving business fast and efficient. Between those there are ships, there are containers, customs and terminal operators, but in the end, this is what our business is all about. If we are not able to deliver that on time, it does not matter because, by any chance, the Vuvuzelas get stuck in Customs and the (FIFA Football) World Cup finish, the Vuvuzelas will not go there anymore.”

“We have been looking to a bigger universe because trade is not just one region. We are trying to get into some things that are common to the region and try to make them work, especially if those things have to do with water or with commerce,” he said.

“We are not trying to reinvent the wheel. We are not trying to do big projects, but simple things that can make the Caribbean more efficient especially with the opportunity that we are going to have in the next three or four years,” Urriola said, referring here to the Regional Maritime Integration Strategy (RIMS) which has ten deliverables to be monitored in its implementation.

He said: “We must remember that security is here to stay, environmental responsibility is here to stay and social opportunities and trade and economics are all linked. We want to start with a shipping network.”

Alluding to the importance of inter-regional trade, Urriola acknowledged that this is lacking in the Caribbean. “We need to get more inter-connected. You go from one island to the other and there are [different] rules from one island to the other.”

“You have to deal with different vessel clearance, different paper work, and some islands are a couple of hours from the other. This is a problem that shouldn’t be. We need to resolve this,” he said.

HARMONISATION & INTEGRATION

Urriola called for there to be harmonisation in laws and procedures across the region. He said there are simple things for which the same procedures could apply.

“You sail for many hours and you don’t have a problem but you go from one island to the other and it is like going to another continent,” he lamented.

“We want to create an IT (Information Technology) platform with a lot of information. We have already made an agreement with Crimson Logic to do this,” he said. “We started doing this and were supposed to present a report in October this year.”

He said Customs integration has been a little more difficult because the shipping community and Customs always have a problem in getting together.

“We need to bring customs to the table because no matter how good the port is, if the cargo stays five, six, seven days to be cleared then it doesn’t work,” he posited.

“We are working also in a cruise tourist integration…trying to get more tourists and looking at what Brazil is doing in tourism. We have already established an agreement with the US Coast Guard for maritime integration…we have also been talking more and more in the Caribbean of our single window project…where you basically go to one window to do all your processing,” he said.

On security being enforced by the United States, Urriola said that it is not possible to perform 100 percent scanning of containers. “It will stop trade,” he said, adding that the implications for the Caribbean are enormous. He said, too, that security must have a balance with trade and that the requirement for 100 percent scanning of containers is something that the CSA has been outspoken about.

The CSA has done an analysis which found that companies in the Caribbean were building large ports. “We have two million TEUs of potential capacity being built, because everybody in the Caribbean wants to be a transhipment hub. Transhipment hubs require a lot of investment. You have to find your niche as a port.”