The UK has lost its spot at the very top of the Paris MOU on Port State Control authority’s White List of high-performing flag states.
The register, which is targeting growth following the UK’s decision to quit the European Union, has tumbled all the way down to number 13 in the performance rankings in the three-year rolling assessment.
According to the Paris MOU’s latest figures, between 2018 and 2020, the UK recorded 17 detentions out of 922 inspections, compared to 10 detentions out of 1,072 inspections when it topped the rankings in the previous year’s assessment.
The UK’s number one spot has been taken by Denmark, which had ranked fifth in the previous listing.
Another flag state to improve its position in the table is the Marshall Islands, which now ranks in third place, compared to sixth in the previous listing.
Between 2018 and 2020, the Marshall Islands had the second largest number of inspections of any flag state in Europe, at 4,280, and in that period had 17 detentions.
Going down
Panama — the world’s largest ship register — ranked 36th in the Paris MOU White List. South Korea has fallen into the Grey List from the White List, as has Estonia.
According to the Paris MOU’s assessment, the worst-performing flag state trading to Europe is Albania, which is the only flag state on its Black List categorised as high-risk.
The Paris MOU also ranks classification societies in terms of their port-state-control performance. It said ABS is the top performer followed by DNV, Lloyd’s Register and ClassNK.
The Croatian Register of Shipping and the Indian Register of Shipping — two membersof the International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) — fell outside the high-performance category. But Turkey’s Turk Loydu, which has ambitions to join IACS, ranked in the high-performance category.
Turk Loydu Foundation chairman Cem Melikoglu said: “Turk Loydu managed to overtake many classification societies, including some of IACS members, and prove its high performance among the other classification societies with this performance.”
