The International Ship Register of the Autonomous Region of Madeira is the 3rd largest in Europe and the 11th in the world, highlighted this Tuesday, May 20, the President of the Regional Government, Miguel Albuquerque, at the opening of the II Madeira Maritime Week, which takes place at the Savoy Palace Hotel, in the city of Funchal.
During the event that brought together dozens of international experts from the maritime industry, the head of the Madeiran Executive highlighted the objective of improving the competitiveness of the Madeira International Shipping Register (MAR) to attract more ships and make it “one of the most important registers in the world”.
“MAR has been exceptionally successful”, highlighted the minister, recalling that “a few years ago, the register was nothing, with four or five registered ships”. Today, highlighted Albuquerque, MAR has “almost 28 million gross registered tonnage, around 1,300 registered ships, including ships from major European shipowners, mainly large container ships”.
Now, he stressed, it is important to “continue to improve MAR’s competitiveness” to attract cruise ships and also mega yachts. To do this, he said, it is necessary to create laws that reduce bureaucracy, facilitating the registration process: “Therefore, we must, in fact, introduce all the competitiveness and everything is moving towards becoming one of the most important registries in the world. At the moment, we are 11th and we must take this into account that we were nothing a few years ago, we had four, five ships… it was an exceptional rise.”