The ASEAN Single Shipping Market: Towards a Regional Cabotage Regime

• Author: Chinyere Ezeoke
• Pages: 91-92

ASEAN Single Shipping Market 91

X JEAIL 1 (2017)

Chinyere Ezeoke

∗

ASEAN’s goal of establishing a single shipping market is consistent with its desire

to create a highly integrated, connected and competitive region in which cross-border,

intra-ASEAN establishment and provision of shipping services is permitted. However,

the measures currently being mapped out for achieving the single shipping market

have not included liberalizing cabotage. This article argues that abolishing cabotage

by removing the prohibition on the ASEAN ship-owners to engage in each other’s

domestic shipping is a necessary requirement to fully achieve a single shipping market.

It discusses the cabotage regimes in the four ASEAN States, namely Malaysia,

Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. It highlights the vessel registration, licensing

and manning requirements of each State. Further, the article discusses the regulatory

provisions that exclude foreign ship-owners from domestic shipping and the scope

of the exemptions from cabotage. Finally, it makes recommendations on how the

disparate regulatory provisions can be harmonized through the adoption of an ASEAN

agreement on cabotage.

Keywords

ASSM, AEC, Maritime Cabotage, EU Regulation, Malaysia, Indonesia,

The Philippines, Thailand

The ASEAN Single

Shipping Market:

Towards a Regional

Cabotage Regime

∗ Senior Lecturer at Faculty of Law of the University of Malaya, Malaysia. LL.M (Nottingham), D.Phil (Buckingham).

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2522-191. The author may be contacted at: cmezeoke@um.edu.my/ Address:

Faculty of Law, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14330/jeail.2017.10.1.05