IoM Awarded Qualship 21 Status

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

30 September 2010

The United States Coast Guard (USCG) has rewarded the Isle of Man with Qualship 21 Status, a maritime quality benchmark which currently only about 10% of foreign ships entering US waters meet.

Qualship 21 is the USCG’s matrix system of extending recognition to “foreign” ships, which fly the flag of a state which has demonstrated a good safety and pollution prevention record with respect to its ships. Ships in the Qualship 21 system are required to undergo significantly less Port State Control inspections by the USCG whilst in US waters.

Essentially, the Qualship 21 system ‘rewards’ good ships thereby contributing to the elimination of substandard ships.

In order to qualify:

• The Flag State or Registry must have less than a 1% detention ratio in the US over a three-year rolling average;
• The Flag State must have submitted its Self Assessment Questionnaire to the International Maritime Organisation;
• No detentions of or violations by the vessel in US waters within the previous 36 months;
• The vessel must have completed a successful USCG Port State Control inspection within the previous 12 months.
• The shipping company must have a detention-free fleet in US waters for the past 24 months; and
• The vessel must be classed with a “non-targeted” classification society.

The USCG currently has an assessment underway to identify those vessels from the Isle of Man Ship Registry that will potentially qualify for the Program. Upon the identification of those vessels, the USCG will contact the vessel owners directly to confirm their eligibility. Following the Registry’s qualification, the assessment process will be concluded in around two to three weeks, the USCG said.

In a letter to the Director of the Isle of Man Ship Registry, Jennifer Williams, Chief of Foreign and Offshore Vessel Compliance at the US Coast Guard, stated:

“I would like to congratulate the Isle of Man on its qualification for the United States Coast Guard’s Quality Shipping for the 21st Century (Qualship 21) Program. Your commitment to quality shipping was evident as Isle of Man flag vessels calling on US ports compiled an excellent Port State Control record. As a result, your flag State’s three-year detention percentage is below the 1% cut-off that is required for inclusion into the Qualship 21 program.”

“The criteria for inclusion are very strict and less than ten percent of all foreign-flagged ships that operate in the United States have earned the Qualship 21 designation.”

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