The debate: about flagging vessels are fully underway.

The Government will appoint another investigation of the Swedish Maritime competitiveness. Svensk Sjöfarts Tidning can in a separate comparison show that even the ship owners can gain several 100.000 Swedish kroners by choosing to register in one of our neighbour countries.

 

The Swedish Transport Board has since the turn of the year received a shocking increase in charges for vessels supervision by 40 to 200 per cent.

As well as affecting the costs that a Swedish flagged tonnage pay for the authorities’ routine inspection activities, this will also affect the Swedish registry competition percentage by selecting flags to new vessels.
– I realize that the signal effect is negative, but we have got a clear signal from the Ministry that we should get paid in full for the inspections we do, says Staffan Widlert, Director General of the Transport Agency to Svensk Sjöfarts Tidning. 

This is also confirmed by Leif Zetterberg, Secretary of Minister Åsa Torstensson from the Ministry of Industry.

– It is clear that it is unfortunate that it comes now with recessions, but the inspection department must bear its own costs, and since we lost a quarter of the traffic, decreases Transport Agency and the Maritime Administration revenues says Leif Zetterberg.

The charges are just a fraction.

The part of the cost of the Swedish vessel inspection department that is not covered by direct charges is instead covered by funds from the fairway dues that pay to shipping to Sweden to the Maritime Administration, which for over a part of these to the Transportation Board.

Supervision charges are just part of the factors that determines a ship register’s competitiveness and attractiveness. From an economic point of view, staffing costs and financial conditions are of greater importance, but already on the expenditure side, the difference is large between the Swedish registry, and others, and a comparison of Svensk Sjöfarts Tidning shows that it differs hundreds of thousands crowns already in the choice of flag for a vessel.

Svensk Sjöfarts Tidning has as an example, made ​​a comparison of costs for registering a vessel under Swedish, Danish (DIS) and Faroese (FAS) flag.
As the sample ships, we have opted for a five years old product tankers of 15,000 dwt with a gross of 11 000. The vessel was bought for $ 20 million (U.S. $ 142 million, DKK 101 million). The rate of financing (borrowing) was 75 per cent, a traditional level of a “normal” market.
We think in the election year we have ahead us to return to our sample vessels to highlight different aspects of the conditions of Swedish shipping.

Ports of Southern Europe.
We assumed that the flag State inspection were made in Southern European ports, with 30 estimated inspection hours,including three outside office hours.
We assumed also that six certificates were drawn up. In Sweden, normally two inspectors are present during inspection.
This means that two foreign charges must be paid, a charge which does not exist in Denmark.

This means that two foreign contributions must be paid a fee that does not exist in Denmark. In addition to the cost of
procedural delay during a meeting with the Transportation Board and one additional journey to the ship  for inspection before issuing of certificates. In the example, this estimated to be eight hours of the meeting
and two x eight hours of certification inspection.
The comparison refers to agency costs. Even in Denmark there are costs for the certificate.

Here, however, delegated significantly more to the classification societies than in Sweden.
The cost can vary but will be lower; including the classification societies have a global organization which reduces
travel costs. After following contact with the classification societies, estimated cost of this example is SEK 60 000 to 100 000.
To the total amount of costs, there shall also be included travel- and other expenses from the inspectors. Then they judged the charges to be about the same in Sweden and Denmark, they have not been with the comparison.
All costs in the Swedish example are those that apply from 1 January this year.
On condition that both shipping companies and vessel meets the quality requirements of the Faroese authorities to be recorded and checked through documentationetc., offering even more over to the class during flagging vessels under FAS, which in this instance means no agency costs.