Council\u2019s letter asserts \u201cunjustified\u201d fees violate agreement to end price signaling.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/div>\n

T<\/span>he<\/strong> European Shippers\u2019 Council has sent a letter to European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager calling emergency bunker surcharges imposed by most large container liner companies \u201cunjustified.\u201d<\/div>\n

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\u201cUnder the present circumstances, the use of such instrument is unjustified. Oil prices had indeed been rising during the last month, but the latest hike cannot be assimilated to an emergency. Oil price fluctuations, up or down, had been frequently happening in the past years and no negative surcharge was applied when the barrel of oil went down to $40 some time ago,\u201d the letter from Nik Delmeire, the ESC\u2019s secretary general, said.<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe application of any emergency surcharge should be reserved for events that cannot be foreseen (such as a crisis influencing the availability of oil). In those situations, it would be unreasonable to have the carrier bear alone the impact on the price of bunker fuel.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

\u201cOn the contrary, under the present circumstances, the carrier can use a specific clause which exists in many contracts, except for all-in rates type of contracts or spot contracts, to revise the freight rates,\u201d the letter said. \u201cIncluding such a clause in the contract is part of the negotiating process between the parties. If such a clause is not provided for in the contract in force, the price should remain the same until the contract is completed.\u201d<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

He added, \u201cThe fact that the container liners, who announced that they would apply such a surcharge, have been doing it almost simultaneously is, from ESC\u2019s point of view, tantamount to price signaling.\u201d<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

Delmeire said this contradicts with\u00a0a commitment 14 liner companies made two years ago<\/a>\u00a0to \u201cincrease price transparency for customers and to reduce the likelihood of coordinating prices by ending the practice of publishing and communicating general rate increase (GRI) announcements.\u201d<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

He said that commitment \u201cwas given legal force by a commission decision on July 7, 2016\u201d and noted it comes just at a time when the EC is starting the process of reviewing a block exemption given to shipping consortia.<\/div>\n

.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANTWERP, BELGIUM: Oil tanker moored near an oil silo in Port of Antwerp July 9,2013 in Antwerp, Belgium. The Port of Antwerp is the Europe’s second largest sea port after Rotterdam. Council\u2019s letter asserts \u201cunjustified\u201d fees violate agreement to end price signaling. The European Shippers\u2019 Council has sent a letter to European Commissioner for Competition…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,52,28,47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11431"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11432,"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11431\/revisions\/11432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}