ESC and GSF in existence denounce the impact negative on the competition of the consolidation between the line companies



The shippers are worried that the consolidation in existence between the shipowners that operate containerized marine services, realized through alliances or fusions that allow to a number much limiting of subjects to polarize the market, and that the employment by the companies of ships of remarkablly advanced ability reduces it is their possibility to choose the marine carrier that the quality of the services offered from the carriers as these last ones, within such agreements, cannot compete from each other relatively to the ability, to the frequency of the departures, transit Time, the ports of port of call and the level of service.

They have emphasized the European Shippers' Council (ESC) and the Global Shippers' Forum (GSF) in occasion of the presentation of a study of search and analysis that the second association has commissioned in order to estimate the impact on the market of the new alliances constituted from the companies of line and the increasing employment of portacontainer of the ability of beyond 18.000 teu. ESC and GSF have introduced together the study evidencing that, as representatives of the exporter and importers of all the world, they intend to join the forces in order to unprecedented promote and to protect the interests of their associates against the changes that they are happening in the field of the containerized marine transport.

The study, from the title "The Implications of Mega and Alliances for Competition and Total Supply Chain Efficiency: An Economic Perspective", it includes a series of recommendations turned to the guarantor authorities of the competition and to the organisms of regulation to the aim to mitigate the possible impact on the competition determined from the presence of a limited number of marine carriers on the main world-wide routes of traffic. The precise study that these authorities would have to guarantee a sufficient independent competition on the main commercial routes, since emerging of alliances it has produced entering barriers for the new ones and has been profitable almost impossible to the independent companies to compete with these great concentrations. Moreover the guarantor authorities of the competition would have to repeal the current exemptions for the shipowning field regarding the normative antitrusts and to put into effect an effective monitoring of the alliances, with the possibility of a direct participation whereby necessary in order to safeguard the competition. At last the study finds the authorities antitrust would have to collaborate and to align their procedures and competences in this field.