Ship management, is defined by Mr Ranjit Narayanan, Regional Manager, Executive Ship Management (ESM), as the commerce of manning, equipping, provisioning and management of ship. Technical, commercial, and crew management is also covered by ship management. Maintainence, dry-docking and technical upgradation is included in Technical management. Commercial management incudes vessel deployment, sale and purchase. Crew management includes recruitment and selection of technical, deck officers and ratings.

Taking on ship management agencies has not caught on among ship pwners in India. However for more than two decades, ship owners abroad have been using these agencies for ship management cost effectively. Some ship owners abroad have even handed over their armada to these agencies, and concentrate only on procuring cargo and developing the companys bottomline. This gave ship owners savings of 10-25 per cent than if they themselves run and maintain the ship.

Where does India stands in this vast international ship management industry? India is one of the largest supplier of skilled manpower to the ship management industry. It is estimated that some 200 ship management firms of different sizes are operating out of India; and the majority of these ship managemet firms are of foreign origin.

Here are some of the worlds best and largest ship management companies, such as Univan, Wallem, Barbers, V Ships and Fleet Ship Management,Bibby Internationals which have been in the country for long, and have been recruiting seafarers for ship management since decades. Bibby International is having its base in India, starting the year with few ships, the company now manages many ships of various sizes, and hopes to double this by the middle of next year.

Bibby International has attracted a number of foreign ship management firms to set up ship in India. As estimated, at any point of time there are around 1.20 lakh Indian seafarers manning vessels all over the world. Around 15-20 per cent of this would be officers. As the Indian armada strength is less than 10 million tonnes, most Indian seafarers work on foreign flag vessels.

But, like the foreign ship owners, the ship owners in India do not outsource the manning operation to ship management agencies, as the latter have full-fledged departments for this. However, some Indian owners like Bibby Internationals now plan to seek out ship management agencies to bring down the cost. Our main role is to bring down the cost for the ship owners.

As said by Capt G. Ramaswamy, Regional Manager, Wallem Ship Management, for a vessel owner to run a ship is a tedious job. Each vessel function like recruitment, purchase needs a different department. The vital issue, and a problem for foreign owners, is recruiting crew. They have to visit India, China or the Philippines to employ ship management seafarers which is a costly proposal for the company. Once the vessel is given to a ship management agency, the owner needs only to worry about sourcing cargo, & accordingly guide the agency to move the vessel to the respective destination. The ship management agency, on the other hand, would manage the entire function of the vessel including employing the crew, supplying the vessel, and taking care of crew repatriation,identity proof, visa and insurance formalities.

Ship is most important, while for ship management agencies the crew is always the top priority. Ship management agencies are stringent, they do not spend unnecessarily things.

The presence of large no. of ship management companies in India is generally due to the wide pool of skilled sea men, larger workforce the country produces.

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