The Maritime Economist Magazine Spring 2015 | Page 15

THEMARITIME Economist

scholarly knowledge in plain language

6.

Ship building
Container port traffic
Seafarers, including “officers” and “ratings”
(i.e. seafarers that are not officers).
Ship scrapping

What can we see from the market shares of, for
example, Chile (Figure 1)? Chile has a higher share
of the world’s GDP than of the world’s population,
which shows that Chileans have an above-average
annual income. The country’s share in merchandise
trade is even higher, reflecting the fact that Chile
has an open economy, whose economy depends
more on foreign trade than the average country. And
Chile’s trade is mostly seaborne, resulting in a share in
containerized port traffic that is even higher than its
share in merchandize trade. The seaborne trade of
Chile is mostly carried on ships that are not owned
by Chilean companies, as can be seen by the lower
share in ship ownership. The Chilean-owned tonnage
is mostly registered abroad, i.e. it is using a foreign
flag, as can be seen by the even lower market share
in “National Flag Fleet”. Chile has some minor ship
building activity, i.e. the ships it owns and the ships
that carry its foreign trade are mostly from foreign
ship yards. The highest market share of Chile is for its
seafarers, including officers and ratings, many of which
are employed on ships that are neither owned nor

registered in Chile. The share in the export of labor
from the officers is slightly higher than the share in
ratings. Finally, there is no ship recycling recorded in
Chile.
Other countries have very different maritime profiles.
Germany (Figure 2) is one of the world’s largest
trading nations, but not all of its foreign trade is
handled by its container ports, but rather by land
transport with its neighboring countries, and through
seaports in the Netherlands and Belgium; Germany’s
largest market share is in ship owning. Greece (Figure
3) also has its highest share in Ship Owning, followed
by the National Flag Fleet. India (Figure 4) purchases
ships for scrapping; many Indians also work as
officers on foreign owned and flagged ships. Republic of
Korea (Figure 5) specializes above all in Ship Building
and Ship Owning. Malaysia (Figure 6) provides a lot
of transshipment services to international container
shipping lines, and many Malaysians work as seafarers
abroad foreign owned and foreign flagged ships.
Panama (Figure 7) is mostly known for its open registry;
compared to its population and GDP Panama
,
also has high market shares in port traffic and the
provision of officers and ratings. Singapore (Figure 8) has
particularly high market shares in ship ownership,
registration and container port traffic.

ME Mag

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