Paris MOU announce new black-grey-white-list

At its 40th meeting last month, the Paris MoU Committee approved the 2006 inspection results and adopted a new flag State performance list, which will take effect from 1 July 2007.  A new publication as from this year will be a performance list for Recognized Organizations to take effect fom the same date.

The “Black List” for 2006 contains 16 flags States, two fewer than last year. The 2006 “White List” includes 37 flag States, three more than last year.

A “hard core” of flag States remain on the “Black List”.  Most of the flags that were considered “very high risk” in 2005 have retained this ranking. The poorest performing flags are still Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Albania, and Bolivia.

Taiwan, Turkey, Algeria and the Ukraine have moved from the “Black List” to the “Grey List” and will hopefully manage to further enhance this improvement.

Belize and Morocco moved back to the “Black List”.

The “White List” represents those quality flags with a consistently low detention record. The United Kingdom, Sweden and Finland are placed highest in terms of performance.  Azerbaijan has moved down from the “White List” to the “Grey List”.

New on the “White List” are Estonia, Switzerland and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Flag States with an average performance are shown on the “Grey List”. Their appearance on this list may act as an incentive to improve and move to the “White List”. At the same time flag States at the lower end of the “Grey List” should be careful not to neglect control over their ships and risk ending up on the “Black List” next year.

The shortening “Black list” and growing “White List” suggests there is a movement towards quality flags.

A flag’s ranking is taken into account when targeting ships for inspection and ships flying flags listed on the “Black list” are liable for banning from the region after multiple detentions.

A new feature in the Annual Report 2006 will be the table showing the performance of Recognized Organizations acting on behalf of flag States.  This new table uses the same method of calculation as the flag State table but counts only those detentions, which the Paris MoU considers to be directly related to a statutory survey carried out by the recognised organisation.

Det Norske Veritas, Registro Italiano Navale and Germanischer Lloyd are the recognized organizations topping the list for 2006.

The Register of Shipping (Korea, DPR), The Register of Shipping (Albania) and the International Register of Shipping (USA) have shown a poor performance and appear at the bottom of the list.

More information can be found in the 2006 Annual Report, which will be released in July 2007.

Please click HERE for the BGW-list 2006.