Liberia is as an Africa’s oldest republic which is bounded by Atlantic Ocean inside of south and west, Cote d’Ivoire in side of east, Guinea in side of north and Sierra Leone in side of northwest. Although it is the oldest republic in Africa continent, it began known in the first years of 1990s. Because it has a long and devastating history that’s why long destructive civil war effected country’s development negatively. However, it has managed to stand up successfully.
When we look at the stages of development in Liberia, we can say clearly that it accomplished big and crucial things in that process. The point reached today is that Liberia accessed to be second largest ship registry. After long and ruinous civil war, that’s point reflects an incredible success. Liberian’s maritime program was started to construct the Liberian Registry in 1948. One point of this period, it was taken support of former U.S. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius who was also in the United Nations as an instrumental figure. After that, Liberia started to be a founding member of the International Maritime Organization. The Liberian Registry has worked more carefully and showed effort in their work and duties in order to promote maritime safety, security and environmental protection. After passed all these steps, now it became big largest ship registry in the world trade.
In the lights of recent developments, it is going to be first place. According to Clarkson’s World Fleet Monitor, Liberia is now second one in the world. This report shows that, Liberia level up faster and outgrown compared with the Marshall Islands. Now it is placed in third place. Alfonso Castillero who explained this success with his speech like that “The Liberian fleet was the fastest growing major open flag in both the shipping and offshore sectors in 2018, and currently has a growth rate of 8.0% – more than twice that of most other open flags, There are a number of reasons for this, not least a growing recognition on the part of major shipowners and managers that Liberia, more than any other flag state, is able to combine increased safety and efficiency with reduced costs”. This success is based on old practice in country that’s known as the flag of convenience. In the 1920s many shipowners started to register their ships abroad only for a small fee. This provided for them to avoid taxes and strict laws back to home. Liberian open the door for these shipowners with many opportunities. Liberian supplied few regulations and provided to sign up easily. All success was built in this starter point. And it started new deals with world. In 2018, Liberia renewed an agreement with China that provides to have cheap ship products into Chinese ports with Liberian Flag.
We can sum up shortly that Liberian always stay strongly in negative atmosphere and responded quickly to problems involving owners. In many cases, it expects strict situations before they arise that’s why it waves Liberian-flag ships efficiently and safely in the global trade. This key feature, it brought second place with peaked at 8.2 percent in 2018, compared with Panama which down by 1.8 percent and Marshall Islands which up by only 2.6 percent. These numbers show us Liberian Registry runs become first place for the next years. Panama is still the largest ship registry, followed by Liberia and there is the Marshal Islands in the third place.
