Interesting the commercial costs of pirates. Anyone looking at sending ships into and out of pirate hotspots is currently paying huge freight premiums. Shipowners (and their insurers) are either slugging charterers huge safelty premiums, or in many cases downright refusing to send ships into those regions at all.
The refusal to send ships into a particular region has consequences on freight rates because a smaller pool of ships means less supply and thus higher prices (for that trade)!
Its a huge problem and as a global society our ability to deal with it in an effective manner continues to be tested.
In my opinion, the first logical step is to lobby the Hollywood heavyweights to immediatley cease creating pirate movies starring Johnny Depp! Everyone wants to be a pirate........
I am offcourse being flipant about a real problem. Lets see how the world deals with the pirate menace over the ensuing months.
Yours
VS
As a shipowner, whenever I'm asked to quote a for a trade which involves passing through the Gulf of Aden, or Somalian Coasts, I always demand that firstly, the War Risk Premium to be covered by Charterers and secondly, the Ransom and Kidnapping Cover to be at least splitted 50/50 between owners and/or Charterers (if not entirely).
ReplyDeleteBoth these premiums depend of type of vessel, size, freeboard, Hull and Machinary insurance value etc).
Due to the high constant risk in the area, all vessel's which are passing the GOA, have the option to register themselves with Nato and other military organisations which are operating from Dubai and/or London and covering the vessel's movements in the area. In this way, you can always use the safe convoys for transiting specific corridors.
Jebus.