Modernizing ships to maintain our position in international market: G Sivakumar, GE Shipping
«It is good if this can come up and with a good network of ports and connectivity. We are there to meet that requirement if it comes up. Second, your question was on where do we buy our ships from? We buy our ships in the second-hand market. We do not issue equity as a company and we have strict balance sheet criteria with regard to how much debt we take,» says G Sivakumar, ED & CFO, GE Shipping.
I want to talk about your recently sold that older MR product tanker and took delivery of comparatively younger MR product tanker as well. Tell me, what kind of efficiencies does it really bring on the table for you with regards to financials? Also, are you anticipating any further changes in your fleet?
G Sivakumar: Yes, we have been doing these transactions now for the last nine months. We have already sold out four ships, which are among the older vessels, and we have replaced them with slightly more modern ships of the same kind. This is twofold.
One is, some of these ships are more so, for example, of the ships that you have on screen, Jag Priyanka is slightly more fuel efficient than the Jag Pranam, and therefore that improves the operating efficiencies.
More importantly, beyond a certain age and you know that we are international operators when it comes to our ships, so beyond a certain age it becomes difficult to meet our international customers' requirements with ships when they cross the age of 20 and therefore we like to replace them with more modern ships.
So, that is the main reason, rather than even say the
