The Paris MOU has hit back at ­suggestions that its decision to stop providing bulk data on port state control (PSC) inspections is a threat to safety.

TradeWinds has reported how insurers, vetting agencies, classification societies and charterers will find their risk-assessment models seriously disrupted by the ­Paris MOU’s decision, which came into force on 1 January.

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In an email to TradeWinds, ­Paris MOU secretary general Luc Smulders insisted that the data provision is not the primary way his organisation supports safety in the shipping industry.

“I would like to highlight that the Paris MOU aims to eliminate the operation of sub-standard ships through a harmonised system of PSC,” he wrote. “Data ­obtained during such inspections is in fact only a byproduct of our work and does not necessarily lend itself to other uses outside the context of PSC. We are dis­appointed with any suggestions that the decision by the Paris MOU poses a threat to safety at sea.”

He said that although the PSC data will no longer be made available in bulk, members will continue to provide public information on ships inspected and current ­detentions and bannings on the organisation’s website. The monthly list of detentions will also still be published.

Hopes that the Paris MOU might backtrack and let some parties continue to receive its bulk feed have faded. It had earlier said it was prepared to consider allowing the data to be provided to certain parties based on safety needs.

The objections of ­associations and companies were considered by a Paris MOU advisory board at a meeting in Ottawa in mid-December. But the advisory board does not have the authority to change a decision made by the body’s committee of 27 member states, and the data ruling was not ­reversed.

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Rescinding the ban will now not be considered until a committee meeting in May. That will leave ­safety organisations little option other than to painstakingly retrieve the data on a ship-by-ship basis from the Paris MOU website.

Some third-party distributors of the data are holding out hope that individual member states will still be prepared to supply the information.

The decision to cut off the data was taken because some member states were upset by the way it was being handled and interpreted by end-users.