The maiden edition of the Ghana Maritime & Shipping Awards has been scheduled for March 2017 at the La Beach Hotel in Accra.

The awards is said to identify, publicly recognize outstanding performers as well as contributors to the country’s maritime industry, at the institutional, enterprise and individual levels.

This award is being organized by Ninetyeightz Events, which is the brain behind the widely acclaimed National Aviation Awards held last year.

But according to the Chief Executive and Events Director of Ninetyeightz, Bergis Kojo Frimpong, the awards “seek to create a much needed platform for all stakeholders in the maritime industry to network and share ideas as to how they can improve as individual entities and also an industry.”

The awards process itself will also involve Partner institutions which are renowned and respected for their execution of accurate and credible awards validation processes, who will be fully involved in the validation aspects of the awardees selection process.

Meanwhile, a special awards panel will be assembled to certify all awards winners for all categories.

The awards selection process will begin shortly with invitation for nominations.

Nominations will be done on-line, in the dailies and will all be forwarded to partners for validation to ensure that all nominees have provided accurate information.

Altogether, there will be about 30 award categories. These will recognize exemplary performance in areas such as Environmental Protection, Corporate Social Responsibility, Marine Crewing & Manning, Maritime Logistics, Marine Research, as well as Safety & Security. Awards will also be conferred for outstanding performance in Sustainable Development, Maritime Education and Training, Customer Service, Ship Finance, and Technology/Innovations.

Also up for grabs will be Port & Terminal of the Year, Ship Owner/Operator of the Year, Marine Industry Supplier of the Year, Shipping Company of the Year, Terminal Operator of the Year, Marine Broker of the Year, Ship Manager of the Year, Shipyard/Ship Repair Facility of the Year, Ship Agency of the Tear, Freight Forwarder of the Year, Classification Society of the Year, Marine Tourism & Leisure Operator of the Year, Marine Bank of the Year, Marine Insurer of the Year and Maritime Law Firm of the Year.

There will be honorary awards for selected pioneers and operators in the industry, since they will be decided strictly by technical assessment.