Tokyo MoU to introduce a New Inspection Regime
At the 23rd meeting of the Port State Control Committee in Singapore last month, the Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control in the Asia-Pacific Region (Tokyo MOU) decided to introduce a New Inspection Regime (NIR) for selection of ships from 1 January 2014. Bearing in mind the request by the Ministers at the 2nd Joint Ministerial Conference of the Paris and Tokyo Memoranda to harmonize PSC procedures to the highest level between the two regions, the Tokyo MOU NIR was developed by taking advantage of the one introduced in the Paris MOU a couple of years ago. Tokyo MOU will adopt related instruments in the next meeting held in October 2013 in Tokyo, Japan.
Under the NIR, ships would be identified into three categories (i.e. high risk ships-HRS, standard risk ships-SRS and low risk ships-LRS) based on ship risk profile, which will be calculated automatically in the PSC database system (APCIS). Under the NIR, different time windows/inspection intervals would be applied to the corresponding categories of ships in accordance with the risk levels so that high risk ships would be subject to more frequent inspections while the quality/low risk ships would be awarded with a wider time window for inspections.
Ship Risk Profile
The existing ship targeting factors will be replaced by the Ship Risk Profile. The Ship Risk Profile will be calculated based on the following elements and using historical data of inspections in the region during a 3-year period:
• Performance of the flag of the ship (e.g. Black or White List of flags, status on completion of the Voluntary IMO Member State Audit Scheme (VIMSAS))
• Type of ship
• Age of ship
• Performance of the recognized organizations (RO)
• Performance of the company responsible for ISM management
• Number of deficiencies
• Number of detentions
Time Window and Selection Scheme
The following time windows are assigned to ships based on the risk levels:
The cycle of time window will be re-started for the ship after an inspection.
There are two categories of priority for inspections, which are defined in accordance with the following criteria:
Priority I: The ship should be inspected, time window for which has been closed.
Priority II: The ship could be inspected, which is within the time window.
Should any overriding factors (e.g. under-performing ship) be identified, the ship would have overriding priority rather than above NIR for inspection.
