Good news about shipping
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from April 1997.
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The ships registry has had its ups and downs. There was a time when it seemed that it some aspects of the registry could become and embarrassment to the Islands and there were once calls for it to be scrapped altogether.
However, Finance Committee heard the good news yesterday that the registry is proving a credit to the Islands as well as a profit centre.
The registry's aim is not to capture massive tonnage nor massive revenues. Rather, it is to be a useful adjunct to the financial centre, another arrow in the bow, yielding reasonable earnings.
Finance Committee was told that the registry's focus was on quality, not quantity. The strategy seems to be paying off at last. That the tonnage registered had doubled last year was, the Committee was given to understand, more likely because of insistence on quality, not in spite of it.
Further steady growth is expected with, it is hoped, concomitant reasonable growth in revenue and a continuing positive image in the world of shipping.
It took many years to attain this happy state of affairs and it is hoped that everything will be done to maintain the Cayman registry as an institution of which everyone can be proud.
