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. 

Only three of these ten owner countries, namely China, Hong Kong SAR and Singapore, have less than three quarters of their fleet registered in a foreign country or an open register, which often makes it difficult to recognise the actual ownership of a ship, as is currently evident in the case of the hijacked Galaxy Leader. The 20-year-old ship with a transport capacity of 5,100 cars sails under the flag of the Bahamas, the charterer is the Japanese shipping company NYK, the owner company is registered on the Isle of Man and Israel is listed as the owner country according to the CRSL.

77% of the world's tonnage is registered under foreign flags. A large proportion of this is registered in open registers such as the Bahamas. Only three open flag states (Liberia, Panama and the Marshall Islands) account for around 48.5% of global transport capacity. As expected last year, Liberia overtook Panama as the largest open registry in the middle of this year, having held this position for more than 25 years. The Liberian registry has grown by 138 mio. dwt (+55%) in the last five years. Compared to the previous year alone, the Liberian tonnage recorded an increase of around 12%. Despite strong growth of 5.3 %, Panama had to cede first place to Liberia. The total growth of the global merchant fleet in tons was 3.6 %.

The list of the 10 most important owner countries has remained almost unchanged for more than a decade, with only Hong Kong displacing the USA in 9th place. In terms of transport capacity, Greece is still in the lead with a market share of 19%, followed by China with 17% and Japan with 12%. The Greek merchant fleet comprises 5,168 ships with a transport capacity of 421 mio. dwt, which corresponds to a slight increase of 2.8% in the last 12 months.

Just over half of the ships sailing for Greek owners are bulk carriers, while a further 43% are tankers. For these two ship types, Greek owners control 22% and 23% of global shipping tonnage respectively.

The Chinese fleet has grown by 32.5% (90 mio. dwt) since mid-2019, significantly more than that of Greece (10.6%) or Japan (4.9%). 

China COSCO Shipping - formed in 2016 through the merger of COSCO and China Shipping Group - controls 25% of China's total transportation capacity (dwt) and is by far the largest shipping company in the world with a fleet of 892 merchant ships with a total tonnage of 86 mio. dwt.