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AN
agency in charge of developing a former United States
naval base is planning to build its own shipyard, which
will be leased to companies that do not have enough
funds to acquire modern equipment.
Although
part of the government’s program to boost the country’s
shipping industry, the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority
(SBMA) has yet to announce how much it intends to allot
for the proposed facilities since the plan is in its
initial stages.
Maritime
Industry Authority (Marina) administrator Vicente T.
Suazo Jr. told reporters last week that the proposed
program, which will be implemented together by both SBMA
and Marina, intends to serve the needs of small and
medium shipbuilders.
According to Suazo, the program, once in place, will be
able to assist these companies since they will no longer
need to spend millions of pesos in upgrading and/or
acquiring equipment.
The SBMA
“will put up dockyards and shipbuilding equipment” that
can be rented out, Suazo said. In turn,
Marina,
which regulates the Philippines’ shipping industry, will
issue “licenses to new facilities and help market it to
the whole maritime industry.”
“SBMA is
still discussing about the rates. Of course, they cannot
come up with something that’s so enormous or else no one
will go to them. It must be a come on,” Suazo said.
Besides being capable to providing enough tracts of land
to be used as shipbuilding facilities, SBMA can also
allow companies to get tax exemptions and other
holidays.
Of the
current 51 local shipbuilding companies, most are
currently not in operation. Meanwhile, those which
continue to build vessels either get orders from abroad
or are relegated to being repair facilities of old
ships.
Ever
since the Domestic Shipping Development Act has been
passed into law in 2004, Marina has increased efforts to
jumpstart the maritime industry by urging operators to
source their vessel requirements locally.
However,
the agency has made very little headway in this regard
since most shipyards have very little capabilities to
build ships.
Last
March, state-owned Maritime Leasing Corp., an agency
subsumed under the Department of Trade and Industry,
told local shipyards that it could assist them in
sourcing out cheaper steel by helping to buy them in
bulk. |
