Marianne Lie is not afraid of challenges. If so, she could have declined the head position with the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association (NSA) and the consequential role as a national and global spokesperson for Norway’s second largest export industry and the world’s third largest merchant fleet. But she didn’t.
Since her commencement as NSA’ managing director in June 2002, Lie has been faced with big challenges in the Norwegian industry and the threat of cross-border consolidation of Norwegian shipowners. Her attitude towards challenge is similar to that of Henry Ford. "One has to size up the challenges, calculate the risks involved, estimate the ability to deal with them, and then make plans with confidence."
In fact, the current challenges weighing most heavily on Lie’s mind are the dramatic downscaling of the Norwegian industry and the effect this will have on national shipping, and how to aggrandize Norway’s contribution in the preparation, development and inauguration of key international maritime legislation, especially within EU and IMO shipping policy.
Lie claims that Norway’s taxation of the shipping industry is "out of sync" with the global shipping industry and other leading maritime nations within the EU.
"Unless our shipowners are backed by long term political predictability and competitive terms for international operation, the Norwegian shipping industry, in some areas, will continue to erode, says Lie.
For the past five years, the number of companies operating in the Norwegian maritime industry has been declining. In the Oslo region alone, some 1,022 maritime companies were operational in 1997 compared to 978 in 2000. The number of employees has grown from around 9,000 to more than 11,000, with a peak in 2000 of approximately 12,000 employees.
A case in point could be the recent take over of Bergesen DY by Hong Kong-based, World World Shipping. Certainly not a one-off event, international observers believe that Norway should brace itself for similar takeovers.
What does the future hold? Lie believes that future characteristics of Norwegian industry are intellectual capital, more services – less products, competence-driven human resources for the international markets.
"This is definitely a future trend, something of which is tailor-made for the shipping industry. The challenge we face is to minimize the transitional cost and get the Norwegian authorities and industry to adapt," says Lie.
IMO in the driver’s set
Shipping has major international challenges. There are huge technological changes, changing patterns of international trade, fluctuations in the market, increased focus on quality assurance and increasingly stringent international requirements for safety and the environment.
Indeed, NSA responds to such challenges, offering to work closely with all maritime authorities and organisations in key maritime issues, says Lie.
NSA fully supports the role of the IMO, aligning itself with the words of Secretary-General O'Neil: "IMO should always and without exception, be regarded as the only forum where safety and pollution prevention standards affecting international shipping should be considered and adopted".
"A proliferation of regional application to foreign flag ships of national requirements which go beyond IMO standards is detrimental to international shipping and IMO itself, and therefore should be avoided," Lie says. "The IMO is efficient and able to develop and adopt adequate new regulations addressing vital safety and pollution prevention objectives."
And while discussions about the role of EU vs IMO remain somewhat controversial, Lie sees little reason for any unclearness.
"The role of EU (the EU commission as a co-ordinator of the EU-member states being individual members of IMO) in respect to the IMO should be twofold. Firstly to work constructively within IMO to develop and adopt new or improved regulations when needed, and secondly to promote effective implementation and application of such regulations within the EU," says Lie. Needless to say, when key member states, like the US, Japan and European countries – strong proponents of high standards - agree on new regulations, IMO can act quickly.
"IMO was able to submit new proposals only one year after the Erika accident and adopted new security requirements just 14 months after the 9/11 terrorist actions in the US," says Lie.
NSA recently completed its first ship security seminar covering the new requirements, the NSA guidelines for Ship Security Assessments, the template for Ship Security Plans to be developed by ISC and other issues of particular interest for the Company Security Officer.
The right channel for evaluating and inaugurating new regulations is the IMO; unilateral action often fails to address the real issues, says Lie.
"When countries disagree with the action or response of IMO in regards to safety and pollution prevention, the preferred solution is to adopt regional requirements within the context of global conventions, such as Sox Emission Control Areas of MARPOL Annex VI."
A self-policing maritime industry
NSA supports the idea of industry self-policing as seen in the Norwegian offshore industry and the ISM system for shipping, but only in combination with a suitable oversight or auditing system by governments.
"The policing principal should be widely applied in the shipping industry, as long as those involved can demonstrate accountability without comprising the required safety standards," says Lie.
When Norway established the NIS register in 1987, Norwegian authorities entered into agreements with five quality class societies as the Recognized Organisation to carry out statutory work on behalf of the Norwegian Maritime Directorate (NMD). As part of the agreement, the NMD could randomly monitor the performance of the class societies.
"In our mind, this is a much better system than leaving everything to the flag states, in which case nobody would audit their performance," maintains Lie.
While this type of auditing is predominantly related to statuatory work, IACS has introduced an internal Quality System Certification Scheme covering classification. Even in this case, there is nothing to prevent the flag state from auditing class societies if deemed necessary.
The current system is only as good as the flag wants it to be, says Lie. "The root of the problem is that many flag states do not live up to their responsibilities and we therefore strongly support IMO’s initiative to establish a mandatory Model Audit Scheme."
Lie believes that port states should act as the safety net in cases where the flag state and class societies do not fulfil their obligations. "Port State Control should be targeted towards ships that represent the highest risk for serious non compliance with set requirements."
Date: 2003-05-15