Report of the fifth meeting of the Agreement on Port State Measures Technical Working Group on Information Exchange
This document contains the report of the fifth meeting of the Agreement on Port State Measures (PSMA) Open-Ended Technical Working Group on Information Exchange (TWG-IE), which was held in Paris, France, from 10 to 14 March 2025.
The TWG-IE welcomed the increased number of Parties that have designated national contact points urging those that have not done so to expedite efforts to complete this to ensure an adequate and efficient communication among Parties on PSMA matters. The TWG-IE agreed on the importance of clarifying the roles and responsibilities of National Contact Points and urged all Parties to designate their ports or indicate where it may not be relevant to do so.
The TWG-IE noted the increased use of the Global Information Exchange System (GIES) in its first year of operation and commended the recent establishment of an automatic connection with the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) electronic port State measures (e-PSM) system. The TWG-IE encouraged Parties without access to any e-PSM systems to consider utilizing GIES to fulfil the relevant provisions of PSMA. The TWG-IE discussed the role of the GIES in support of the implementation of complementary instruments to the PSMA and welcomed additional developments and refinements including the migration of NCPs and Designated Ports (DPs) to the GIES, the advance request of port entry (ARPE), the vessel profile, the user management function, the live chat function, the transshipment and landing declaration forms and other developments on functionalities to support the work of port State Parties using GIES for information exchange.
The TWG-IE discussed the general approach as well as individual indicators proposed for the monitoring of the implementation of the PSMA and agreed that these need further discussion and recommended to the Fifth meeting of the Parties to task the Strategy Working Group to consider the proposed indicators (or alternatives) in monitoring the effective implementation of the PSMA, based on information from the GIES, the PSMA questionnaire, and other information sources. The TWG-IE welcomed the Secretariat’s proposed workplan and strategy for the implementation of the GIES and recommends that efforts are made to further support Parties that wish to use GIES for information exchange under the PSMA as well as to progress the work on interoperability for establishing connections with existing systems.