The US Maritime Administration correctly accounted for USD75.9 million made from selling 90 obsolete vessels in 10 years following concerns of mismanagement, federal overseers have found.
The US Government Accountability Office
(GAO), in a report published on 23 February, concluded that MarAd had allocated
the proceeds from the National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF) from FY 2005 to FY
2015 into the Vessel Operations Revolving Fund (VORF) “consistent with
applicable law.”
The oversight agency also found that, during
the same period, the USD52.6 million disbursed out of the VORF to the country’s
six state maritime academies and to the National Park Service (NPS) “were
properly supported”.
The GAO’s audit was included as a provision
in the US Coast Guard (USCG) funding authorisation in 2015 amid concerns by
Washington, DC, lawmakers about the revenue generated from ship-recycling sales
and MarAd’s contract solicitation process.
A separate audit conducted in late 2015 by
the US Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) found
that America’s ship disposal programme may have been exposed to unnecessary
risk due to weaknesses in management oversight.
The audit was conducted as a result of an
organisational restructuring at MarAd while the agency was overseeing roughly
USD700 million in federal funds.
Two programmes examined by the OIG, MarAd's
Ship Disposal Program and its Vessel Transfer Office (VTO), were criticised by
lawmakers for allegedly allowing US shipowners to reflag old vessels so that
they could be recycled at less cost at foreign shipbreaking facilities.
According to federal law, MarAd has the
authority to scrap or sell certain vessels that no longer warrant preservation.
Proceeds from the sales deposited in the VORF are allocated to NDRF for
maintaining or repairing ships, paying or reimbursing certain expenses of the
maritime academies, and providing funding for the NPS’s National Maritime
Heritage Grant Program. The timings of the payments made by the VORF are
determined by the Maritime Administrator.
Last year US Senate lawmakers amended MarAd’s
most recent funding bill to instruct that proceeds from the fund be distributed
more frequently. They directed the Maritime Administrator to prepare a report
listing all government-owned vessels currently available for dismantlement, a
list of vessels expected to be declared obsolete and dismantled in the next
five years, and the government's plan for dismantling those vessels in the
United States.
Source:
fairplay.
27 February 2017
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