HK Endorses Bill to Make Shipping Register More AttractiveA 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 ship owners have been endorsed by the Chief Executive-in-Council, a spokesman for the Economic Services Bureau said Thursday.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 spokesman said. "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. Another change is to reduce the period of provisional registration from three months to one month. The tonnage charge for provisional registration will correspondingly be reduced. 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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