Ship Registration in Panama, Singapore, Bangladesh Flag: A Comparative Study Approach

Md. Mostafa Aziz Shaheen

Abstract: Registration is the precondition for a ship to maneuver in high sea and ports worldwide. Many ship registers followed aggressive registration policy permitting non-citizens with flexible tax and fee structure resulting in substantial amount of revenue earning by becoming preferred destination for vessel registration globally. As a maritime nation, Bangladesh has not yet grasped the potentials of ship registry and expand her fleet. In this paper, effort has been made to compare the ship registration among Bangladesh and others top ranked vessel register (Panama, Singapore) concerning policy, revenue structure and incentives for mitigation to get the optimum output in registration market. The study depended on data collected from both the primary and secondary sources. This study identified a complicated ship registration process in Bangladesh relying on national register with nationality as a determining factor for registry resulting in sluggish growth of ship registration. The underlying causes are strict legal frame, paper based process, huge tax burden, inadequate incentive. Therefore, this study mentions flexibility in legal frame, registration process automation, justification of tax structure and investment acceleration through incentives.

Keywords: Ship Registration, National Register, Registration process, Tax structure