Changes to the methodology of this year’s table include no longer giving a negative indicator against flags not make the US Qualship 21 programme, since the list of flag states qualifying “now varies considerably from year to year,” explains ICS director of policy & external relations Simon Bennett.
Overall, this year’s table “continues to highlight the sound performance of all of the world’s major flag administrations, regardless of whether they are open registers or so called ‘traditional’ maritime flags,” he adds.
An important development over the past year has been that the IMO Member State Audit Scheme became mandatory from the beginning of 2016. For next year’s table ICS therefore intends to add a new field indicating whether a flag has undergone that audit or not.
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