Gold Magazine March - April 2013, Issue 24 | Page 23

NO RE
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or almost 25 years,
the Cyprus Shipping Chamber
(CSC) has worked
with the government and the
maritime administration to resolve
problems and
improve the image of Cyprus Shipping.
Gold spoke to Thomas Kazakos, DirectorGeneral of the CSC, about the Chamber’s
role in upgrading the Cyprus shipping
industry and how things are expected
to change drastically following the new
President’s commitment to appointing an
Under-Secretary for Shipping.
Gold: Just how big is the Cyprus shipping industry?
Thomas Kazakos: The 147 shipping
companies that are members of the Cyprus
Shipping Chamber collectively control a
fleet in excess of 2,200 oceangoing ships
of 49 million gross tons. To put this in
perspective, the Cyprus flag is the 10th

largest fleet in the world and the 3rd largest
in Europe with 1,000 oceangoing ships of
20 million gross tons. If all the ships under
our control were under the Cyprus flag today, it would probably be the 3rd largest in
the world. So Cyprus has a fully-fledged,
fully operational industry in almost all sectors of shipping internationally. The only
two shipping segments that we don’t really
have here are shipbuilding and banks specializing in ship finance.
Our member companies comprise about
60 shipowning, shipmanagement and,
recently, chartering companies plus the 90
or so, “satellite” services companies, specializing in servicing shipping companies,
including spare parts suppliers, marine
insurance brokers, ICT specialists, and essentially everything that shipping companies need in order to operate. Shipping is
a high-value asset industry and if you bear
in mind that the value of an average-sized
vessel of an average age could vary from a
few dozen to hundreds of millions of dollars and the fact that through Cyprus we
control in excess of 2,000 ships, you can

understand the size of the industry we’re
talking about.
Gold: Those numbers are impressive.
T.K.: They are, though we are not so
much concerned by numbers as by quality but it is a fact that having a large
registry and a large shipping industry
automatically gives the resident country
a very strong political presence. Why?
Because a ship is an extension of national
territory so whenever a ship calls at any
foreign port the first thing that happens
is national sovereignty recognition. For a
ship to be allowed to enter any national
territorial waters, let alone a port, it means
that country recognizes Cyprus as an independent state.
Gold: So the Turkish embargo on
Cyprus-flagged ships stems from that
country’s refusal to recognize Cyprus as
a sovereign state?
T.K.: More or less, yes, and this has been
the Achilles heel of the Cyprus flag for a
number of years now. It is a negative fac-

THE INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT, FINANCE & PROFESSIONAL SERVICES MAGAZINE OF CYPRUS

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Gold 23

07/03/2013 12:25