ANTAQ holds public hearing on revision of NR 18/2017

This Tuesday (12/11), in Brasilia, the National Agency for Water Transport (ANTAQ) held a public hearing on the proposal for amendment of Normative Resolution No. 18/2017-ANTAQ, which provides for the rights and duties of users, intermediary agents, and companies operating in maritime support, port support, cabotage, and long haul.

The meeting is part of the public consultation on the subject, which is ongoing on the Agency portal. Contributions to the proposed standard may be sent to ANTAQ until 11:59 pm on 01/02/2020, exclusively through and in the form of the electronic form available at http://portal.antaq.gov.br. Contributions sent elsewhere are not accepted.

Open at 3 pm, the public hearing No. 14/2019 was chaired by ANTAQ’s Maritime Navigation Regulation manager, Sérgio Oliveira, and the general secretary of the Agency, Joelma Barbosa. The work table was also composed by the directors of the Agency, Mário Povia (general director) and Adalberto Tokarski, and federal attorney Flávia Tavares.

On the society’s side, the debate was attended by representatives of Centronave, Alliance Navigation Logistics, Usuport, Petrobras, Fenamar, MSC-ABDM, One, Sepetiba Tecon, Vale S.A., and Asia Shipping, among others.

On the occasion, the director general of ANTAQ said that there is a visible acceptance from the parties in relation to NR. Povia said the policy is not to interfere with trade issues, but to “create an environment of predictability and transparency in industry contracts. The standard seeks to harmonize relationships between service providers and contractors and to curb cases of abuse. The Agency does not want to interfere in any way with commercial issues,” he said.

Director Adalberto Tokarski also spoke. According to him, the review will further improve relationships between service providers and users, bringing greater transparency and predictability to contracts.

Review

ANTAQ’s proposal brings several amendments to NR No. 18, published on December 26, 2017. Among them, it considers abusive the conversion of freight expressed in foreign currency to national currency using conversion rates incompatible with the reference market. To assess the abuse mentioned in the previous paragraph, ANTAQ will use as reference the exchange rate of the Central Bank Information System – SISBACEN, effective at the date of closing the invoice, also considering the financial costs of the transaction.

According to the proposal of the Municipality, sea carriers and intermediary agents may retain goods, bill of lading (BL), until settlement of the payment of freight or contribution for gross damage, withholding for any other justifications.

The Agency states in the revision that sea carriers and intermediary agents may only charge amounts from the shipper, consignee, endorser, bill of lading (BL), joint, and several debtor expressly designated in a specific contractual instrument, being directly charged to third parties outside the legal relationship.

And, in the case of scale suppression, the effective sea carriers should adopt the necessary measures to deliver the cargo to the agreed destination, fulfilling the punctuality criterion, without charging extra costs to the user, except in situations of gross damage.

The full ANTAQ proposal for the revision of NR 18/2017 is available at the link http://web.antaq.gov.br/sistemas/sisapinternet/AudienciaPublicaDetalhar.aspx

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