Americas News
Panama: Will Continue to Clean up Sub-standard ships on Registry
The Panama Maritime Authority (AMP) has said it would continue to clean up its fleet to prevent substandard Panama-flagged ships from being detained in foreign ports, a week after the country was added to an international watch list.
Panama's ships registry was added to the "grey list" of the Paris Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) last week, Reuters reports.
The MOU is an agreement among 27 countries establishing an international inspection regime for foreign ships in other nations' ports, aiming to control ships' safety and environmental standards.
Panama's inclusion on the watch list could be due to an ageing fleet, according to the AMP. Of 374 detentions reported in the last three years, 104 of the detentions involved ships more than 30 years old and 35 were of ships over 40 years old, according to the authority.
The Panama ship registry is the world's largest with around 8,500 vessels on its books
