Aviareto, a joint-venture between SITA SC and the Irish Government, selected by the Preparatory Commission for the International Registry under the auspices of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to establish and operate the International Registry of Mobile Assets, announced the Registry will go live on March 1st, 2006 as Malaysia recently became the 8th country to ratify the Cape Town Treaty effectively bringing it into force on that date.

The registry provides a central repository – an electronic database – that will record sales and financial interests in mobile assets (airframes, aircraft engines and helicopters), establishing priority of interest in such holdings. As a result, the risk of lending can be better assessed allowing financial institutions involved in aircraft object transactions to reduce the interest rates they currently charge.

“The International Registry of Mobile Assets, which has passed final acceptance testing by ICAO, will enable stakeholders to secure their interests in assets they finance, and will be a central vehicle in helping parties understand the extent to which they have legal rights in aircraft equipment,” said Kevin Power, Managing Director of Aviareto. “For the first time interests in aircraft equipment involving transactions in Cape Town Treaty Contracting States will be accessible electronically in one place. This information is vital to the world’s airlines, financiers, leasing companies, manufacturers and governments.”

Professor Ingo Walter of the Stern School of Business, New York University and Professor of International Management at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France led a recent study on the economic benefits of the Cape Town Convention and the International Registry to the Aviation Industry. The study, which brings an earlier study by the same authors published in September 1998 up to date, covers a 20 year period from 2003 until 2023 and identifies economic benefits in five key areas: