By Marvin Cato | HGP Nightly News|
OGLE, GUYANA — Regional maritime officials converged at the AC Marriott Hotel in Ogle on Tuesday evening for the opening ceremony of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Caribbean Memorandum of Understanding (CMOU) on Port State Control. Marking three decades of regional maritime cooperation, the high-level summit brings together senior delegates and port state control officers from more than 30 countries to iron out harmonized shipping, safety, and security frameworks.
Delivering the feature address, Minister of Public Utilities and Aviation, Deodat Indar, stated that hosting the conference for the second time underscores Guyana’s expanding leadership role in regional shipping. He noted the event represents a shared ambition to foster an internationally competitive, compliant, and highly efficient Caribbean maritime space.
“Gathering today and for the next few days represents more than the coming together of nations and professionals across the region,” Minister Indar declared. “It demonstrates a strong partnership and collective ambition shared by Caribbean states and its peoples.”
The summit arrives at an absolute inflection point for domestic port administrators. Propelled by the country’s booming oil and gas sector, vessel traffic into Guyana has surged by approximately 42% since 2020, while overall imports have risen threefold over the exact same period. Minister Indar emphasized that this exponential commercial scaling places an immense, immediate responsibility on regulatory bodies to enforce rigid standards of maritime governance, environmental stewardship, and strict operational excellence.
Addressing the security dimension of port oversight, Minister of Home Affairs, Oneidge Walrond, firmly argued that maritime regulations can no longer be viewed as simple administrative tasks. In light of modern cross-border challenges, Walrond revealed plans to combine traditional ship inspections with a newly introduced Container Control Programme (CCP) to proactively flag high-risk cargo containers and plug glaring security gaps at shipping terminals.
“Port State Control must be seen not only as a maritime administration function, but as part of a wider national security ecosystem,” Minister Walrond explained. She noted that integrated border tracking and swift intelligence sharing across regional lines remain the most potent weapons against transnational syndicates engaged in narcotics trafficking, weapons smuggling, human trafficking, and illegal migration. Walrond highlighted that agencies under her ministry—including the Guyana Police Force, Immigration Authorities, and the Customs Anti-Narcotic Unit (CANU)—are tightly synchronized to protect the state’s ports and borders.
Meanwhile, President of the Shipping Association of Guyana, Dr. Komal Singh, framed the three-day convention within Guyana’s ongoing transition into a critical logistics hub for the wider South American and Caribbean trade routes. Dr. Singh pointed to the rapid physical expansion of shore bases, deep-water port infrastructure, and optimized transit corridors connecting Guyana to its continental neighbors as clear drivers of international commercial interest.
With CMOU Chairman Michel Amafo similarly noting that the fast-evolving shipping industry demands highly adaptive oversight, the delegate body is scheduled to spend the remainder of the week executing technical sessions to update vessel inspection standards, synchronize data systems, and advance collective ocean governance across member states.
