The strategic importance of Greece’s maritime cluster is highlighted in the Bank of Greece’s (BoG) annual report.
The Greek-owned fleet represents almost 1/6 of the world’s tonnage and a large part of it is managed from Greece, which is the largest ship management center in the world.
In particular, the Greek-owned fleet represents over 17% of the world fleet (in terms of tonnage – dwt), which ranks it in first place.
However, only 13% of the Greek-owned fleet is registered under the Greek flag, although a significant part of this is managed by Greece.
Essentially, ship management is the basic function of Greek maritime entrepreneurship, around which various supporting and other activities are structured, BoG governor Yannis Stournaras pointed out in his report.
“Greek shipping – especially in the current juncture of historical changes in terms of regulatory framework, fuel, geopolitical instability and global trade shift – can benefit from the successful operation of a dynamic shipping cluster.
At the national level, this may have positive consequences for the Greek registry (promotion of the Greek flag), while a national policy may be more easily adopted at the cluster level than at the level of an individual company, an element that may prove particularly useful in the promotion of ‘green’ solutions for shipping,” it is pointed out.
In order to demonstrate the importance of this activity in the Greek economy, it is worth mentioning that, in current account terms, receipts from maritime transport, which in 2022 reached the historically high level of 21 billion euros, in the last five years (2019- 2023) accounted for over 42% of total receipts from services and 21% of total exports of goods and services.
A recent study estimated the overall impact of shipping on Greek GDP at 7.9% (2018-2021 period average).
