The ASEAN Single Shipping Market: Towards a Regional Cabotage Regime

Abstract

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.