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8 February, 2001 (Thursday)
Bill to make HK Shipping Register more attractive to shipowners
endorsed
A bill and a regulation to improve the registration procedures
for the Hong Kong Shipping Register (HKSR) to make the Register
more user-friendly and attractive to shipowners have been endorsed
by the Chief Executive-in-Council, a spokesman for the Economic
Services Bureau said today (8 February).
The Merchant Shipping (Registration) (Amendment) Bill 2001 was
proposed as part of the Government's on-going efforts to streamline
the ship registration procedures in Hong Kong.
"To proceed from one port to another, a ship is required to
have on board a certificate of registry issued by the flag Administration.
The Hong Kong requirement for the original title document for
processing provisional ship registration often delays the registration
since delivery of the document from the place of sale of ships
overseas to Hong Kong can take several days. This holds up the
ship registration process and unnecessarily delays the ship to
resume service," the spokesman explained.
"To overcome this problem, the Bill proposes that copy of the
original title document be acceptable for provisional registration."
The spokesman said the acceptance of copy of the original title
document required consequential changes to the ship registration
process.
"To prevent commercial fraud, the Bill requires a confirmation
from the ship mortgagee that he has seen the original title document
and is aware that a copy instead of the original document will
be used," the spokesman said.
"Another change is to reduce the period of provisional registration
from three months to one month, after reviewing the usual time
lag between initial registration and availability of the original
title document. The tonnage charge for provisional registration
will correspondingly be reduced from 1/4 to 1/12 of the annual
tonnage charge under the Merchant Shipping (Registration) (Fees
and Charges) (Amendment) Regulation 2001."
The Bill also streamlines the administrative procedures of the
HKSR by removing the requirement for retention of the title document
by the Registrar upon registration of a ship.
The spokesman added that the Government had introduced a number
of improvement measures to enhance the attractiveness of the HKSR
since April 1999. These efforts had yielded a rapid growth of the
fleet on the HKSR, reaching the target of 10 million gross registered
tons in October 2000, which was 18 months ahead of the target date.
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