Hong Kong: Shippers in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Macau are elated over China's Ministry of Communication's disapproval of four shipping discussion agreements' application to collectively raise THC levels in South China that has been declared by the MOC as being in violation of the Notice on Strengthening Supervision on Liner Conferences and Freight Discussion Agreements (Decree No. 10 issued by Ministry of Communication, PRC on March 12, 2007).
The MOC has ordered the IADA, IRA, IRSA and ISAA discussion agreements to cease all such collective rate-fixing activities for one year while some of them are to be penalized for their actions.
The collective agreements were filed by the Intra-Asia Discussion Agreement (IADA), the Informal Rate Agreement (IRA), the Informal Red Sea Agreement (IRSA) and the Informal South Asia Agreement (ISAA) to increase THC levels in South China to similar rates to the main east-west tradelanes, with charges leaping by anywhere from 197% to 339%.
"Carriers are far too greedy in seeking to raise THC levels totally without justification. It is clearly a move to exploit shippers for the carriers' own benefits. And the amount being considered is very substantial," said Willy Lin, Chairman of the Hong Kong Shippers' Council.
"Using Shenzhen ports throughput figures--and only calculating for the particular trade lanes (intra-Asia) of said carriers--the lines are asking shippers to fork out RMB3.15 billion more annually."
"The increases would cause great burden to shippers in the Pearl River Delta at a time when they are already under tremendous pressure from an adverse trade environment and intense competition from the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) economic zone and other regions," said Toland Lam, Executive Chairman of the Shenzhen Shippers' Association. [03/05/07]
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