Comment - Major shipping nations

摘要

The world shipping scene is determined by a small number of shipping countries with regard to the ship ownership and the ship registration, respectively. The top 10 shipping nations control about 71 per cent of the world fleet's tonnage. Nine of the top 10 ship owning countries use foreign flags for more than half of their tonnage. As regards flags of registration, 72 per cent of the world's tonnage is foreign-flagged. A large share of the foreign-flag tonnage is sailing under open registers. The tonnage of the top ten open registry flags stood at 830 mill dwt, representing a share of about 55 per cent in the total world merchant fleet.