Whale of an idea or too little, too late?

(From Lloyds List)

Byline: Calls for a great white paper on shipping seem to have echoed along the hallways of maritime Norway longer than a whale's breeding cycle, writes Jerry Frank

As another spring gives way to summer, Norway's shipping community at last has a document on which to pin its hopes, even if it still has to make its tortured way to legislation in Oslo.

The nation's shipping industry has so far received the publication on April 1 with guarded enthusiasm, if only for the fact that a plan now exists on paper.

Of course, a hefty government document packed with proposals cannot at once paper over years of growing animosity, and its somewhat frosty reception is a measure of this rift.

'The industry is quite pleased with the government's ambitions to ensure European tax conditions for Norwegian shipowners,' says the Norwegian Shipowners' Association's director general, Marianne Lie.

'We look forward to even more specific indications of the arrangement and formulation of the tax system through further deliberations in the Storting and in connection with next year's government budget.'