GSF responds to EC's guidelines

In its response to the consultation on the European Commission’s draft guidelines on maritime competition, the Global Shippers’ Forum (GSF) has endorsed the principle of the 'guidelines'.

It said GSG believes the liner shipping operators will need the ‘guidelines’ in order to help them in the difficult transition away from a business traditionally modelled on collective-coordinated action of establishing rates and surcharges for members to maximise their revenue and information sharing to match supply with demand in order to prevent overcapacity and falling rates.

Saying that GSF is mostly concerned with the issue of information exchange, it pointing out that the guidelines must clearly state that no system of information exchange should be permitted which has the effect of directly or indirectly identifying the competitive strategies of competing liner shipping companies to each other, and reducing competition between individual liner shipping companies.

It also added that the development and implementation of controversial proposals for a system of information exchange between different liner shipping companies, as proposed by the European Liner Affairs Association (June 2006) would reduce competition in liner shipping by making it easier and possible to coordinate capacity decisions.’