Experts: Algeria lost sovereignty on maritime shipping services
Experts called upon the Ministry of Transport to the need to hurry up and review the Decree 01-286 which was issued on September 24, 2001, which fixed the terms of practices and activities of the ship’s agent, agent of load, broker of marine and texts related to it that were issued in 2002 and 2003, and which became incurring the public treasury losses of hundreds of millions of dollars annually, since the launching of the procedure because of the refusal of foreign shipping companies to apply the Article 2 of the Executive Order, which provides that the exercise of activities of the agency and brokerage relating to ships for transporting passengers and goods, fuel and cargo, is conducted by natural persons from Algeria or people with legal entities under the Algerian law.
Complete abandonment of the application of the article led to the loss of entire monitoring of the shipping activity for the benefit of foreign parties, which became the only player in the field of shipping, which is the backbone of the foreign trade of the States.
A report in possession of Echorouk, directed to the Minister of Transport in charge of monitoring the marine trade, showed that the government does not apply tight control of shipping services, which includes transportation and services of containers’ conservation, which is based on the principle of speed in re-exportation to the owner of the marine company, whatever the ways and modes of payment when shipping or when delivery at the port of arrival, and here a real problem is posed for Algeria, because there are not laws that contribute to the protection of public money from abuses of the people who represent foreign shipping companies and most of them are foreign nationals.
Documents of the same report, show that agents of foreign shipping companies refuse to pay dues of services which they receive in the Algerian ports in hard currency, as they stopped the introduction of hard currency to Algeria when getting accreditation to practice activities of the agency, and brokerage in Algeria from the Ministry of transport, as every one who represents a foreign shipping company is not resident in Algeria, reverse to the international marine shipment laws, which required the residence in the country of activity.
The report showed that investments of the foreign shipping companies in Algeria did not exceed since 2002, the level of billing for companies that import goods from abroad, and realize huge profits at the expense of the public treasury in hard currency, as once the arrival of ships to Algerian ports the institution of the port unloaded them, according to maritime law, and when entering and exit of each ship it is billed with all services provided to the ship by the institution of port, but the foreign shipping companies found a loophole and issued an invoice to customers as they want, up mostly to 150% of the invoice value which is issued by the public institution of port which is doing all services in fact.