Dear colleagues
This comes to you at an important stage of development in our industry – do we endorse the proposal to have our own shipping line to carry the SA flag around the world?
This is one of the principles of the Merchant Shipping Bill and the setting up of a hub port in South Africa, resulting in one port handling all international cargo, which would then be shipped on SA flagged coastal vessels to the other ports.
This raises the question as South Africa does not operate its own flag vessels, the cost and time implications of setting this up and do we have the skills to run such an operation?
It will be interesting to note the feedback on this from our stakeholders as this is something we can either endorse or veto, as our democracy allows this!
As you are aware, Exporters Western Cape presented our case to the Portfolio Committee on Transport on Tuesday, 5th June, together with AGBIZ and SAAFF, SAASOA having presented the previous week.
The general consensus was that we are not opposed to the Bill in principle, just the issue of cabotage and the establishment of our own shipping line, as indicated above.
We believe this is something the economy can ill afford currently, even though it was announced on Friday 30th May, the DoT in collaboration with DBSA, discussions were to start with the carriers and interested parties on this issue.
As this scribe was in the employ of Safmarine, from 1974 – 1982, a time when the container era started on 1st July 1977, which, through trial and error took Safmarine to become one of the top 10 container operators in the world and the top 10 companies on the JSE!
The SAECS service earned many accolades which of course, now begs the question, what trade lane/s would our own carrier operate on, what is the minimum number of vessels required to achieve optimum service?
There are more questions than answers at this stage, so watch this space!
We are hoping Minister Creecy will provide the answers at one of our forthcoming functions!
Exporters Western Cape – the independent voice of the Exporter!
