Hong Kong shipping lines in limbo over new competition law

© Khunaspix Dreamstime.

This story has been circulating for a few days and centres on the new Competition Ordinance that Hong Kong is preparing to introduce. In what appears to have been an oversight – although there is no guarantee that it is not – regulators have not given any special exemption to container lines operating vessel-sharing agreements, as is common in other regimes including the EU, US and China. Carriers say that unless this is amended it will force them to stop calling at the port – and given that by some accounts 95% of containers arrive or depart on vessels that are part of VSAs, this could mean the end of Hong Kong as a port.