Article 150 – Clause 1 (Vietnam Maritime Code 1990) has the following concept of maritime broker:
“A maritime broker is an intermediary in the signing of transportation contracts, marine insurance contracts, ship charter contracts, ship purchase and sale contracts, towage contracts, crew hire contracts and other contracts related to maritime activities according to the entrustment of each case by the entruster”.
Thus, the main job of a broker is to act as a bridge between the ship owner and the cargo owner to sign a contract and receive brokerage commission. Sometimes the broker acts as an agent for the ship, so in terms of professionalism, he must have special specialized knowledge.
History of birth:
The charter brokerage profession was born at the end of the 19th century, spontaneously due to the urgent demand of the Foreign Trade industry and the world’s merchant fleet to have a centralized mechanism to maximize the use of capacity to satisfy the increasing demand for cargo transportation. Developed strongly in the 20th century, now the charter brokerage profession has a special and indispensable position in the maritime transport market. England is considered the country that has pioneered the formation of the charter market and set standards on capacity and ethics for this newly born profession.
In Vietnam, from 1954 until the economy opened (1986), ship brokerage and ship leasing were one of the exclusive functions of Vietfracht assigned by the State, the Transport and Chartering Company – established on February 18, 1963 under Decision No. 103/BNT-QD-TCCB of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and transferred to the Ministry of Transport under Decision No. 334/CT-HDBT of the Council of Ministers (now the Government) on October 1, 1984. Since 1986, when the economy opened and especially since 1990, especially after the Vietnam Maritime Law was issued, the ship brokerage profession has been freely developed with the participation of hundreds of large and small companies belonging to different economic sectors.
