Checking China

The IMO audit team has conducted a 10-day audit on China’s general strategy of implementing international maritime conventions, schemes, procedures, resources, flag state implementation and effects etc. from 9th November 2009. Xu Zuyuan, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Transport, attended the audit opening meeting and delivered a speech.

The Audit team was led by Leslie Hemachandra of the Merchant Shipping Division of Sri Lanka, one of the senior auditors appointed by the IMO. He has previously audited many countries including the United States of America

The Vice minister stated that China is privileged to have Hemachandra, a maritime expert as the audit team leader who has participated in auditing of many countries and facilitated many auditor training programmes on be half of the IMO.

Xu stated that as a major shipping power, China always actively participates in international maritime affairs. It keeps improving the maritime administrations and enhancing the capability to implement the conventions. China has been elected the tenth consecutive Class A council member of IMO, and has ratified over 40 conventions, protocols and amendments about maritime safety and pollution prevention. Chinese government voluntarily accepted the audit of IMO and this will not only auditing China’s implementation capacity, but also testing China’s capacity of maritime management, services and effectiveness, which is good for China to make further improvement on maritime administration. MOT submitted the audit application to IMO on behalf of Chinese government in May 2008.

Hemachandra stated that he is honoured to lead the audit of the People’s Republic of China, a friendly country of Sri Lanka. He further stated that auditing of maritime Administration of China is a quite difficult task since the legislative system of the country is a complex one.

It is learned that the Voluntary IMO Member State Audit Scheme is intended to provide an audited Member State with a comprehensive and objective assessment of how effectively it administers and implements those mandatory IMO instruments which are covered by the Scheme. It is expected that the audit scheme will bring about many benefits, such as identifying where capacity-building activities would have the greatest effect.