A Marshall Islands ship registry official has brushed off criticism from a US organization amid an announcement that the US government will launch an “open” ship registry.

The announcement late last month by the United States government of its intention to establish an “open” shipping registry based in the U.S. Virgin Islands put the Marshall Islands – which operates the third largest registry in the world – and other countries that run open registries that the United States will soon be a competitor.

Proponents of the new US foray into the open registry world have released a report criticizing the Marshall Islands and other major ship registries, claiming they fail to enforce regulations and laxly monitor the large number of vessels in their registers. The Northeast Maritime Institute’s Center for Ocean Policy and Economics report specifically called out the three major ship registries – Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands – for “poorly enforced regulations and a lack of due diligence and surveillance (which) created tremendous risk to the US and global shipping industry and facilitated illicit activity on the high seas.”

The Marshall Islands Trust Company hit back at criticism from this US organization this week.

But an official from the Marshall Islands Trust Company which runs the ship registry said the Marshall Islands had one of the best records in the ship registry.

“While we cannot comment on characterization errors made by others for self-serving purposes, the Marshall Islands Registry has been and continues to be the premier quality registry in the world,” said the Deputy Commissioner for Maritime Affairs James Myazoe, who is based at the Trust Company of the Marshall Islands in Majuro. Myazoe said his statement was supported by data provided by major port state control (PSC) regimes around the world.

“PSC is the real dashboard of how a ship registry enforces national and international regulations,” he said. “The Marshall Islands is ranked in the top 10 of the Paris and Tokyo MoUs and has maintained Qualship 21 status with the US Coast Guard for an unprecedented 18 consecutive years.”

Downtown Majuro, capital of the Marshall Islands
Photo: Hilary Hosia

Myazoe described the US Coast Guard’s Qualship 21 program as “one of the toughest quality regimes for flag states to achieve.”

As part of the rationale for the US government’s decision to create an open registry, the Northeast Maritime Institute’s Center for Ocean Policy and Economics stated that the United States “has traditionally supported the three major international open state regimes of the flag. However, they have also since grown important for true compliance monitoring and lack the desire to provide true global law enforcement services. Many open international flag states have knowingly or unknowingly enabled much of the illicit and unsustainable practices seen on the high seas today.

A report on flag state performance released in late January by the International Chamber of Shipping suggests that the Marshall Islands is one of the most outstanding international registries. “The level of performance of many of the larger flag states – including the Marshall Islands, Greece, Singapore and Hong Long (China) – continues to be very positive,” the report notes.

The International Chamber of Shipping website adds: “The chart also indicates that distinctions between ‘traditional’ flags and open registers no longer make sense, with many of the top performing open registers alongside several European registers, and flags like Japan.”

The registry’s “performance chart” ranks registry scores according to 19 different categories. The Marshall Islands Registry is one of only 11 countries that displays a “green” bar in all 19 categories, meaning it has a “positive performance indicator” in each category. It joins those developed countries that are positive in all 19 areas of registry operations: Norway, Singapore, Bahamas, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy and Japan. The current United States Government Ship Registry does not have a positive rating in all 19 categories.