Leading shipping bodies undertake benchmarking' to boost sector growth

Leading shipping associations have joined hands to undertake a benchmarking exercise' to bolster the growth of the Indian maritime sector.

"In order to enhance the employment prospects as well as global share of Indian seafarers in the years to come. ...MASSA and FOSMA (Foreign Shipowners Representatives and Ship Managers Association) jointly undertook a benchmarking exercise' recently to rate the quality of Indian maritime training institutes," the Maritime Association of Shipowners Shipmanagers and Agents (MASSA) said in a statement.

It said the exercise is aimed at rating Indian maritime institutes and is expected to assist Indian students to identify prestigious ones, and also help Indian/foreign shipowners and marine crewing agencies world-wide to recognise credible Indian maritime institutes for sourcing well-trained maritime workforce needed to operate around 50,000 specialised cargo ships across the globe.

The rating exercise was done by a Mumbai-based research agency, IIRE' on behalf of MASSA and FOSMA.

Both FOSMA and MASSA jointly funded the benchmarking exercise' as no fee was charged to the maritime institutes, which participated voluntarily in this 9-month long pan-India survey-exercise.

The statement said it witnessed an active participation of 27 leading shipmanagement companies with over 70,000 Indian seafarers on their roster and 22 Indian maritime institutes.

Commenting on the report, MASSA Chairman Capt Prashant Rangnekar said, MASSA has always believed that seafarers must get the best facilities for their career enhancement, and value based training is an important aspect of career development. With like-minded attitude at FOSMA, it was decided that together we should map the various training institutes across India on a voluntary inclusion basis, and at no cost to the institutes, to identify those institutes which align with our thought process."