<<The president of an association representing container terminal operators is confident that Brazil will be ready for the Safety of Life at Sea, or SOLAS, Verified Gross Mass rule and has established a Special Technical Group to resolve any final concerns.

Sergio Salomão, president of the Brazilian Association of Private Container Terminals, or Abratec, said the processes to meet SOLAS are largely in place and that container terminals will provide VGM certificates as part of a commercial service.

“Yes, all our members are already working hard to resolve the final pieces in the jigsaw and we will be ready for the July 1 deadline,” Salomão told JOC.com in his Rio de Janeiro office this week. “And with this in mind, we set up the STG as a task force to iron out final details and they started working from March 1.”

The STG will finalize the smaller details that need solving in the weighing and logging process, but it will not set or suggest the rates that should be charged for VGM services.

“Each terminal has to work out its own value of what it will charge, but it is a service being provided by the terminal and so a price must be paid for it,” Salomão said.

Many exporters and some voices at the Brazilian Ports Ministry have suggested that there should not be any extra charges for tapping a key on an electronic data interchange or writing out a certificate, and if there is any then the shipping lines should pick up the tab.

He said the charges for storage if a container is found at the gate to be overweight from any certificate already signed from the factory will also be at the discretion of each individual terminal.

Nearly all the box terminals in Brazil already weigh containers arriving at their gates, while dwell time before loading, which can range from two to four, but sometimes seven days, is sufficient enough to allow stowage planning, Salomão said.

He expects that 80 percent of the weighing would take place at the terminals, because most exporters do not have sufficient weighing equipment and processes.>>

Fuente: Rob Ward, JOC.com, http://dmtrk.net/1AMT-4515F-MEXSWG-21UE0S-1/c.aspx