Global Shippers' Alliance (GSA), the global organization that represents shippers and freight forwarders and is trained for the Asian continent from the Asian Shippers' Alliance (ASA), for that European by the European Shippers' Council (ESC) and for the continent American from the American Association of Exporters and Importers (AAEI), has published today a manifesto in which they specify which should be the minimum level of service in the field of containerized maritime transport and fair treatment that shippers and shippers should receive in this market.

The manifesto - specified GSA - has been defined in the wake of the dysfunctions of the global supply chains taking place by time, with problems that are more acute in the segment of the transport of containers by sea. But it was drawn up - he underlined the organization - also in consideration of 'legislation, such as the Block Exemption Regulation in Europe, which allow us to move towards concentrations monopolistic in the market, which represent an important cause of the current poor market situation. In today's markets of maritime transport - denounced the Global Shippers' Alliance - competition, which is an important factor for a level of acceptable service, is very limited and the loaders of small and medium size, in particular, suffer a lot from this situation'.

The first two of the eight points of the manifesto show that the terms of contracts should be fair and balanced with respect to to the carrier and the freight forwarder and should be respected by both parties and that the reliability of the schedules of the ship departures are the essence of maritime transport containerized and should be made in a transparent way a sharing data on the expected capacity of the carrier and on the freight forwarder's demand.

According to GSA, the shipper should then be notified in a precise and timely manner any type of variation of the ports of call of the ports affected by the service, while the consequences for the sea carrier if the freight forwarder does not make it available to him the cargo and the consequences for the shipper if the carrier delays the taking charge of the goods beyond the terms of tolerance agreed should be taken into account and adequately compensated.

In addition, for GSA, taxation by maritime carriers surcharge should be limited to temporary external events unpredictable and beyond the control of carriers and should double invoicing of soprannoli by the part of of carriers, i.e. charging shippers for costs already included in freight or also invoiced to third parties.

The manifesto therefore stresses that the costs of detention and demurrage should be adequately highlighted by the vector and, above all, they should not be applied when delays accumulated by the ship exceed what can be considered a reasonable delay.

Finally, GSA calls for the quality of empty containers delivered by the carrier complies with the standards and meets the requirements of shippers and that reliable information on carbon footprint and digital documentation according to the Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA) standards come provided, as far as possible, by the carrier.