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Small island states want shipping services strengthened
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Posted on May 14 2009
Small island states in the Pacific islands region want shipping services strengthened to secure much needed regular services to countries in the group.
A meeting of Ministers for maritime transport in SIS was held yesterday in Tonga mainly to deliberate on the progress made by the Secretariat of Pacific Communities and the Pacific Islands Forum secretariat in improving shipping services to SIS aimed at improving regularity of services and reducing freight costs.
The SIS group at the meeting included Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Nauru, Niue, Marshall Islands, Cook Islands, Palau and Wallis & Futuna and French Polynesia.
The meeting considered the need for various solutions to improve SIS shipping.
Previous SPC Regional Maritime Program reports have recommended a purpose-built vessel donor supplied ship, hub ports and regional shipping commissions to regulate shipping services in different sub-regions of the Pacific. Shipping services are critically important to SIS given the high dependency on imports. [B][I](SPC[/I][/B])
