The Marshall Islands and Vanuatu have formed the first concordat between ship registries aimed at maintaining and enhancing safety and quality standards. The announcement was made at a press conference in London today, 25 May 2001.

Clay Maitland, Managing Partner of International Registries, Inc. (IRI), which administers the Marshall Islands registry, said that an agreement had been reached with Vanuatu Maritime Services Limited (VMSL), the administrator of the Vanuatu ship registry, aimed at enforcing high quality safety standards for ships transferring between the Marshall Islands and Vanuatu flags.

"This will ensure that no permissions for transfer or certificates of deletion will be issued between the two registries, for any vessel deemed by either flag state to have failed to meet applicable international rules and standards," he said. "I believe it is the first agreement of its type"

He said that IRI and VMSL are also in discussion concerning cooperation on a number of broader safety-related and technical issues.

Mr Maitland said that in addition, discussions are also taking place with certain other safety conscious registries. "We hope they will join us in coordinating their vessel transfer policies. We expect that we can now work towards a high level of cooperation with other responsible registries, and by that we mean not just open registries."

"We believe that this type of agreement is the best way to frustrate 'registry hopping' by substandard ships," Mr Maitland said. "Moreover, our agreement rewards the responsible owner, manager or charterer by giving them tangible benefits such as greatly expedited service. We think that this approach will have sharper teeth than a global treaty or convention, which if experience is any guide, would succumb to the usual international lip service, be watered down to satisfy the lowest common denominator, and have little practical means of enforcement - except perhaps yet one more paper certificate for examination by port state control authorities."

"We hope that other major registries will join us or form similar international agreements, and that perhaps in the not too distant future we will arrive at a global concordat of quality registries. That will clearly identify and isolate the substandard registries, which hopefully will either radically improve if they can, or go out of business."

Ends

For Further information:

Don Sheetz, Executive Vice President, Vanuatu Maritime Services Limited, New York. Tel: (+) 212 425 9600.

Captain David Bruce, IRI, London. Tel: (+) 207 247 8782

25 May 2001