Information

Port and Maritime Association of Guadeloupe (UMEP)

The year ahead will see the Port and Maritime Association of Guadeloupe (UMEP) continuing its role of facilitating maritime development and best practices in the French Caribbean territory.

For more than 20 years UMEP has been the voice of all stakeholders in the Guadeloupe port community, promoting and encouraging national, regional and domestic trade through the Port of Guadeloupe. The association monitors and disseminates information about port and ship activities to its members. UMEP will continue to serve as an advocate for business interests in the maritime community through the publication of documents, press releases and short films.

The activities and projects of UMEP are founded on its organisational philosophy that the key to growth is to foster partnerships among the professions that make up the maritime community of the port.

Collaboration

With this in mind UMEP, in collaboration with the private company CEIBA Ltd, launched a project in 1999 to establish a cargo community system for the port community of Guadeloupe.

Members of the association hold regular meetings with the French Customs department to discuss new procedures and provide feedback on the electronic data interchange (EDI) platform. This will continue in the year ahead. Previous efforts in this regard were rewarded on 10 July 2006 when French Customs placed the Port of Jarry on the same level of safety and traceability as the ports of Le Havre, Marseilles, Nantes St Nazaire and Rouen.

Paperless system

This platform is now operating paperless exchanges of data and receives electronic manifests from all ports of importation. The platform manages all imports and exports of containerised and conventional cargo. Through this project Guadeloupe has made significant strides towards the development of a paperless system. The main objective is to boost the port’s productivity while providing safety, security and traceability.

Building on this experience, UMEP is participating in two new projects in the year ahead:

• Project ‘Observatoire du Grand Cul de Sac Marin’: This project was designed to monitor the environment of the port site and to measure the impact of its infrastructure development on the environment. The objective is to adopt environmentally friendly practices and to demonstrate a commitment to environmental responsibilities.

• BECCA electronic shortsea shipping database. This is a freight data system network, adapted to shortsea shipping to provide effective management of demand and supply of maritime transport between the Caribbean countries. UMEP members are actively participating in the steering committee managed by CEIBA Ltd. The BECCA project is co-financed by the Regional Council of Guadeloupe through the European fund Interreg.

Through these projects UMEP is demonstrating its commitment to playing an important role in the integration of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean environment.