The Hong Kong government plans to set up an inter-departmental body to provide a one-stop shop for the maritime sector, which has steadily lost ground to Singapore as a maritime hub over the past few years. The new Maritime Bureau is expected to include port development but the priority will be on promoting shipping services, such as ship management as well as brokerage, finance and insurance services. “What we should do now is to upgrade Hong Kong to be on par with London as an international shipping service hub,” lawmaker Miriam Lau said. “Let’s forget about attracting more containers to go through Hong Kong” especially since Shenzhen had already overtaken the city as the third-busiest port in the world last year, Lau said. The Hong Kong government has long been criticized as inefficient in promoting the maritime industry. More shipowners were leaving Hong Kong for Singapore because of lower taxes and ease of operations in the city state, a ship manager said. “In Singapore, if you talk to the Maritime Port Authority, they will coordinate everything you need in various departments, be it tax or immigration,” said Peter Cremers, Chief Executive of Hong Kong-based ship manager Anglo-Eastern Group, which manages 450 vessels globally. “Hong Kong is different. Unless the shipowner knows what the tax requirements are for shipping, you may get into the wrong hands.” Sabrina Chao, Chairperson of Wah Kwong Maritime Transport, praised Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying’s decision to set up a statutory maritime body in his policy address last month. Chao is a member of Hong Kong’s advisory Maritime Industry Committee. Instead of cutting taxes, Chao said the group was pressing for the government to have double tax avoidance treaties signed with South Africa and Australia, countries which conduct a lot of shipping business with Hong Kong. “The new bureau needs to be run by an industry veteran who knows the industry from inside out,” she said. “It’s not too late if we can act and catch up now.” Others, though, feel that the opportunity for Hong Kong to boost its status as a maritime hub is long gone. “Hong Kong is lagging behind Singapore for ship brokerage as most of the ship brokers have been based in Singapore for quite a long time,” said Geoffrey Cheng, Director of Transport at Bocom International. Cheng said the cluster effect on information flow in Singapore was so strong that Hong Kong found it hard to compete against its rival, the South China Morning Post reports.

The room for profit in China’s ship recycling industry is likely to be squeezed by weak domestic scrap demand and the high cost of its “green” vessel-breaking methods this year, even though the government has offered favorable policies to encourage more vessels to be dismantled by 2015. Wu Jun, Vice Secretary General of the Beijing-based China National Shiprecycling Association (CNSA), said because China is taking action to scale down infrastructure and real estate investment while using restrictive measures to cut production capacity in its steel plants, the country currently doesn’t need a large amount of scrap as a source of steel. “Therefore, it won’t be easy for Chinese ship-breaking yards to sell scrap even at a bargain price to the market this year. The previous high prices of both foreign and domestic scrap ships were another element that cut the profit margin of Chinese companies. Many of them have already reported financial losses for last year,” he added. As a major global ship recycler, China dismantled 2.5 million tons of scrap vessels in 2013, up 4.6% from the previous year, according to the CNSA. The scrap price was between CNY2,450 and CNY2,650 a metric ton in China in the first half of last year. But the price dropped to CNY2,300 a metric ton in January, data from the China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry shows. China’s ship recycling yards are mainly located in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong and Guangdong provinces. There are around 110,000 people working in the sector. Because of cheap scrap prices, Wu said many ship-breaking yard owners would rather keep their scrap in storehouses, instead of selling it cheaply to steel plants. To help China’s shipping companies reduce the pressure caused by overcapacity over the past four years, the Chinese government issued a new subsidy policy to encourage the nation’s shipping companies to reduce the number of aging vessels and replace them with technically advanced vessels last December. The country will offer cash subsidies of CNY1,500 per gross metric ton to shipping companies that scrap their vessels before their operational expiration dates. The China National Shiprecycling Association forecast this policy is good for CNY4.56 billion in subsidies for ship breaking. Ship owners are entitled to receive 50% of the cash subsidies upon scrapping their vessels and the other 50% when a new replacement vessel is built. The owners of all aging ships scrapped between 2013 and 2015 qualify to apply for subsidies.

Ports & sea transport

• Qingdao Port handled 450 million tons of cargo last year, an increase of 10.6%. Its container throughput grew 7% to 15.52 million TEU in 2013. The achievements made Qingdao the world’s seventh-busiest port by both cargo and container volumes, up one notch from a year earlier, according to the Shanghai Shipping Exchange.
• In an age of aerial drones and driver-less cars, Rolls-Royce is designing unmanned cargo ships. The Rolls-Royce’s Blue Ocean development team has set up a virtual-reality prototype at its office in Alesund, Norway. Eventually, the London-based manufacturer of engines and turbines says, captains on dry land will use similar control centers to command hundreds of crewless ships. Drone ships would be safer, cheaper and less polluting for the USD375 billion shipping industry that carries 90% of world trade, Rolls-Royce says. But Simon Bennett, Spokesman for the International Chamber of Shipping, said unmanned ships were illegal under international conventions that set minimum crew requirements.

A  job market for Chinese high potentials will be organized by Ghent University Doctoral Schools, the Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce (FCCC) and the Province of East Flanders. The fair will take place on 1 April at 12h00 at the International Convention Center (ICC) in Ghent, where at the same time the Graduate Fair and Job Market for Young Researchers will be held.

Ghent University Association with its four member institutions – Ghent University, University College Ghent, Artevelde University College Ghent and University College West-Flanders – has approximately 250 Chinese students. Chinese final-year Master students and young researchers (doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows) will receive a personal invitation to visit the Graduate Fair. The job market will also be advertised through the Chinese interuniversity student council.

The purpose of the Fair is to help final-year Master students and young researchers find a (first) job and make it easier for employers to network with these young professionals. Additionally, jobseekers receive ample information about diverse career and further study options available to them. Interested companies are given the opportunity to network with the visitors, introduce them to their business and offer CV analysis.

You are invited to participate in the China Job Market. Reserving a booth, you will have direct access to Chinese students, doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows in all academic disciplines: veterinary sciences, bioscience engineering, sciences, engineering and architecture, economics and business administration, pharmaceutical sciences, medicine, arts and philosophy, psychology, pedagogical sciences and law.

Wenzhou’s financing management regulation, the first local legislation covering private lending, will take effect on March 1. It has been called a breakthrough to monitor and regulate private financing activities, as well as a model for the nation. The regulation is intended to be a formal solution to the financing problems of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by providing a more regulated system in Wenzhou. The city was selected to conduct trials of financial reforms at the end of March 2012. Regulators and lawmakers recognized the need to regulate the collapsing private-financing system after widespread loan defaults by factory owners and investors led to a crisis. Operating guidelines are expected to be issued in conjunction with the legislation that will clarify definitions and specify the procedures for dedicated bond issues and fundraising. Loans exceeding CNY3 million or with more than 30 lenders, must be recorded at the local financing management bureau within 15 days after the deal is signed. The city has opened 11 registration centers for this purpose. The nation’s first private lending credit database will also be launched formally on March 1. “The direct beneficiaries will be SMEs experiencing financial problems, as they can use more methods to raise money legally,” said Zhou Dewen, Chairman of the Wenzhou SME Development Association.