News

Top officials from Singapore and Panama signed a new maritime deal last week, expanding the relationship of the two natural global partners.

The new pact will ease port restrictions and implement new technologies to assist ships registered to the two countries, and generally make transit of goods easier, according to press coverage. And while these types of announcements are common in the maritime world, it’s always interesting to note Panama’s continued growth and influence in global trade.

“The Singapore and Panama ship registries are among the largest in the world,” said Lam Pin Min, Senior Minister of State for Transport for Singapore. The new deal will “yield significant benefits through speedier port clearances for vessels registered with our two countries calling at our ports,” he said.

The new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) includes a new level of cooperation on an array of very specific maritime details, such as the use of electronic certificates to facilitate port state inspections, the exercise of port state control (PSC) inspections by both countries; and personnel exchange, according to local media coverage.

The new deal will create very specific benefits, according to Seatrade-Maritime News. “Vessels registered with either Panama or Singapore calling at each other’s ports will benefit from faster checks and clearances,” the publication reports. The use of electronic certificates and cooperation “reduces administrative burden of issuing, sending and keeping hard-copy certificates on board, facilitates regulatory oversight and enforcement action by the authorities and expedites port clearances.”

“We are pleased to cooperate and bring to our customers and ship owners the most advanced technologies to alleviate the administrative burden and facilitate access to port state inspections, port state control inspections, and port clearances,” said Noriel Araúz, Minister of Maritime Affairs and Administrator of the Panama Maritime Authority (AMP).