Greek ship owners prefer Malta flag to Cyprus

Malta has overtaken Cyprus as the preferred shipping register of Greek ship owners after their own flag, according to Lloyds's List.

The Maltese register now includes 601 Greek ships.

The result is remarkable when one considers the traditional links between Greece and Cyprus. Greece controls one in every four oil tankers in the world.

Lloyd's List said that Greek owners controlled 3,355 vessels, 18.3 per cent of the world's capacity in service or on order.

The report said that although for those in the know it had become routine to pay homage to Greece as the world's most significant ship owning nation, fresh statistics put an even more dramatic slant than usual on their appetite for investing in ships.

The figures show that 929 Greek-owned ships (27 per cent) are registered with the Greek registry followed by 601 ships in Malta (17.9 per cent), 579 in Cyprus (17.3 per cent) and 519 (15.5 per cent) in Panama.

Only one third of Greek-controlled shipping is currently under the home flag and more recent figures point to even more Greek-owned tonnage going to the Maltese flag and the Marshall Islands flags.

Altogether, Greek owners continue to look far and wide for registries, using a total of 44 flags.

A study released by the Greek shipping cooperation committee in London showed that Greek ship owners had added to their collective fleet significantly over the last year or so, now controlling one in every four oil tankers and about the same share of international dry built capacity. The study also showed that the Greek-owned fleet had been getting progressively younger in profile, while there is a subtle tendency overall to invest in fewer but larger vessels.