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by Ravi Ladduwahetty

Global Insurance giant-Lloyds of London has nominated a four member team which will be in Colombo today predominantly to conduct an insurance audit on the Colombo port, authoritative shipping sources told the Daily News last night.

The highlight of this team's presence in Colombo is that the report that it will submit to London after an extensive audit is expected to recommend the waiving the remaining 25% of the war risk charge on the cargo arriving at the Colombo Port or leaving it, they said.

The four member team is from Trident Maritime Ltd of UK and will be in Colombo for a period of three or four weeks. They will also survey not only the Colombo port, but the ports of Galle and Trincomalee and other issues relating to the shipping and aviation industries in Sri Lanka sources said.

This is a sequel to Port Development and Southern Development Minister Ronnie De Mel leading a high powered delegation to the United Kingdom to negotiate with the London based War Risk Rating Committee (WRRC) on the safety of the Colombo Port and that adequate security measures have been taken to avert a terrorist attack in the aftermath of the July 24 LTTE attack at Katunayake.

Until Minister De Mel's negotiations, the war risk surcharge had a crippling effect on the shipping and import export sectors and Lloyds made a dramatic reduction of 75 per cent of the war risk surcharge following Minister De Mel's negotiations.

Lloyds is also expected to nominate another team to Colombo next week, but the nominee marine insurance company and the number of delegates in that team have yet to be finalised, according to these sources.

Acting Chairman of the Ceylon Association for Ship Agents Parakrama Dissanayake said that CASA is pleased that the Government's negotiations and timely intervention with Lloyds has been instrumental in bringing an insurance audit team expeditiously and are confident that the report of this team will brief London that the security of all ports in Sri Lanka are adequate and it will also confirm that the Government has taken the requisite security measures.

"We also hope that this measure will also enable to remove the held cover status applicable to Sri Lanka," he said.

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