SSMR Vol. 08: The world merchant fleet sails under a foreign flag

The global shipping industry is dominated by a small number of shipping countries in terms of ship ownership and ship registration. Today, the 10 largest shipping nations control around 71% of the world fleet's tonnage.

Regarding flags of registration, 77% of the world’s tonnage is foreign-flagged. A large share of the foreign-flag tonnage is using open registers. About 49.3% of the global transport capacity is attributable to only three open flag states (Liberia, Panama and the Marshall Islands), with the top three flags having increased their share of the global merchant fleet from 43% to 48.4% over the last five years.

The Liberian register has been by far the fastest-growing shipping register in the world in recent years. Compared to the previous year alone, the Liberian tonnage recorded an increase of 3.7%, after 12% the year before. With an average growth of 3% over the last 5 years, Panama was able to maintain second place in the rankings, even though fleet development has stagnated compared to 2023. 

As a result, the flag register with the largest fleet is Liberia (402.2 million dwt), followed by Panama (366.5 million dwt) and, already at a distance, the Marshall Islands (302.9 million dwt). Their combined tonnage represents almost 48 % of the world fleet.

While most owners have registered the majority of their fleet under foreign flags, China stands out as one of the countries with a high share registered under national flag. The by far largest national register is China with a combined tonnage of 125 million dwt, followed by the Greek (53.4 million dwt) and the Japanese flag (39.8 million dwt).

Slightly more than half of the ships sailing for Greek owners are bulk carriers, and another 43% are tankers. In these two ship types, Greek owners control 22% and 23% of the world’s shipping tonnage, respectively, and this is also reflected in the average capacity in dwt of the Greek owners' fleet. At more than 80 thousand dwt, this is only topped by the average tonnage of the ships of the Saudi Arabian and Omani owners, the vast majority of whose fleets consist of crude oil tankers and have an average capacity of over 100,000 dwt.

The massive expansion of the Chinese-owned fleet once again highlights China’s growing dominance in shipping and efforts to take a leading position in the most significant areas of the global economy and trade. Since mid-2020, the Chinese owned fleet has expanded by 40.3% (120 mill. dwt) and hence much more than Greece’s (8.0%) or third-ranked Japan’s growth (1.7%).