DNV GL draws fire for regional tax plan

IT is a strange world when a classification society comes up with a plan to slap a regional tax on its primary clientele, the world's shipowners. That is what major classification society DNV GL has just done.

Once again the subject of this column is ship recycling, or scrapping. But the twist this week is that DNV GL has co-authored a study that, in the strangulated prose of the European Commission, "proposes an alternative financial incentive instrument based on the introduction of a Ship Recycling Licence required for the entry to EU ports, connected with fees that serve capital accumulation with the aim to cover the revenue gap between sound and unsound recycling".

What the study actually means is that ships flying all flags, and not just those registered in EU, should pay a charge every time they enter an EU port and if the ship is eventually scrapped at a yard on an EU-approved list, the final owner gets the money back, less administrative costs. It "recycles" an idea to create an EU ship recycling fund. The study expects its proposals would increase the cost of EU port calls by about 2 per cent.