The US FMC instructs containerized shipping carriers to communicate further commercial and operational data to it



The US federal agency Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) has imposed on the three main global alliances between companies containerized shipping to send to government agency american more information on the rates of their services liners as well as hold capacity provision of shippers and freight forwarders. Especially 2M, an alliance formed by the companies Maersk and MSC, Ocean Alliance, formed by CMA CGM, COSCO, Evergreen and OOCL, and THE Alliance, consisting of hapag-lloyd, HMM, ONE and Yang Ming, will have to provide the FMC with uniform data on the freight rates charged for the individual routes and by type of container and service that the The agency's Bureau of Trade Analysis (BTA) will use for assess the behaviour of companies and competitiveness of the containerized maritime transport market.

If the order to communicate such detailed data shows that the willingness of the FMC to impose its role as regulator of the market in order to safeguard competitiveness a advantage of US trade, from another point of view Having regard to the request to make known to the Agency more information detailed commercial and operational activities of these maritime carriers seem to support the hypothesis that is anything but peregrina that the previous attempts of the American authority to assess the competitiveness of the market are broken by in front of a myriad of non-homogeneous information made of countless contract freights, spot freight and a multitude of surcharges and additional rates of different nature that always make more difficult for customers, but also for the authorities regulatory, compare the offers of maritime carriers.

It is no coincidence, in fact, that the FMC has announced the decision to require sea carriers to communicate these information specifying that this has been decided to following a one-year BTA examination to determine what data is needed to properly analyze the behavior of carriers and market trends. And that despite the fact that the FMC itself admits that "the three alliances of ocean carriers are already subject to more frequent and rigorous monitoring than any type of agreement registered with the Commission. Information already collected - acknowledged the FMC - include data detailed operatives, minutes of meetings between managers of the agreement and regularly scheduled meetings with the parties of the agreement in which Commission staff shall address the more crucial issues',

With this statement the Federal Maritime Commission seems to confirm that the substantial data communicated so far by the companies of navigation to the FMC are not sufficient to assess the status and the behaviour of the maritime transport market containerized. Or it seems to support the thesis formulated by some maritime carrier that requests, especially those more recently, by the US federal agency, anxious to identify the culprits of the dysfunctions of the global supply chain and American, represent a form of unjustified harassment in the comparisons of shipping companies.

B.B.