08 May 2015
Foreign shipowners
Foto: Antônio Melcop
Foreign frame came in sight of the regulation of the National Agency of Waterway Transportation (ANTAQ). The agency finalizes a proposed rule to discipline the appropriate service of navigation that include long-distance owners - the last frontier not yet regulated sector. Shipowners are the owners of ships and responsible for the shipping.
The standard, which should be published later this month, will work omission ports, regularity of shipping lines and container demurrage costs by, among others. There will be fines if there is noncompliance with the rules.
"The agency owed it to the market, focusing on user interest," said the director general of Antaq, Mario Povia. "We want to give predictability of costs."
Users (exporters and importers) ask for some time that the Antaq regulate the activities of shipowners. They complain that the Brazilian shipping long haul made by foreign companies does not follow a regulation. Dependents who are these owners to export or import, are hostages, for example, ships deviations from ports in the nick of time, charge prices sometimes abusive by demurrage of containers handled and no payment surcharges beyond the sea freight.
"The biggest problem is being violated by having to pay a cost for which you did not run," says Guilherme Braga, director general of the Council of Coffee Exporters of Brazil, one of the associations that have been asking the Antaq a stronger performance. "Sometimes the ship is complete and the owner prefers to leave to climb a port and go to the next, leaving the next ship carry the load that was scheduled. It is an external problem to us," she notes.
André de Seixas, president of the association of users of the ports of Rio de Janeiro, says that there are cases where the cost for the container retention is the user's responsibility and the owner has the right to charge for additional time. "But the owner must prove that the value is to compensate the cost for retention. You have to pay extra? It depends, it is necessary to demonstrate why and how. It does not happen today."
To Seixas, regulation of Antaq will only be effective if encompass, in addition to the owner, the other operators in the market, such as freight forwarders, shipping agents and carriers that do not have their own ships.
Also representative of exporters and importers, José Cândido Senna, coordinator of the ports users committee and airports of São Paulo, the Commercial Association of São Paulo, is more cautious. It argues that the regulation is made taking into account the verification of responsibility of each one, avoiding unjust punishments.
"The arrival of the vessel to the terminal for cargo release is necessary to have an information system to assess the responsibilities for the closing of berthing windows, the delays, the slow pace. Today, it is a push game."
The side of the ship owners, the executive director of the National Center for Transatlantic Navigation (Centronave), Claudio Loureiro, said shipping companies already provide a lot of information to federal agencies. "I hope no intention of regulation is based on individual cases and in relevant statistics, not the exception."
According to him, the owners associated with Centronave omit "between 1% and 2%" of 25,000 scales that make every year in Brazil. Cancellations, Loureiro says, are for external reasons that prevent the docking of the ship within the "window" programmed, as problems in ports (including strikes to delays of operation) and the port closure by bad weather conditions.
Loureiro also argues that the possibility is preserved, world practiced by the owner cancel the scale. "I hope the light regulatory activity in this account and not create more obstacles than existing" he says, citing difficulties faced by shipping companies in Brazil, such as supply ships and bureaucracy.
Source: Valor Econômico / Fernanda Pires | De Santos
