United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

The dataset provides information on the ownership of the merchant fleet for all countries. "Ownership” refers to “Beneficial Ownership Location”: it indicates the economy in which the company that has the main commercial responsibility for the vessel is located. The economy of beneficial ownership may be different from the country in which the vessel is registered.

This dataset shows statistics on the international maritime transport. It contains data on the size of the world merchant fleet by flag of registration and by type of ship. Data are presented in thousands of dead-weight tons (DWT).The dataset presents also, for each region or country 1) its share in the world fleet, and 2) the share of a ship-type in its fleet. From 2011 onwards, the figures on numbers of ships are also available, as well as the data in gross tonnage (GT).   This table contains consolidated time series from various issues of the UNCTAD Review of Maritime Transport. The Review reports on the worldwide evolution of shipping, ports and multimodal transport related to the major traffics of liquid bulk, dry bulk and containers. Please see http://unctad.org/rmt.   The data refer to the beginning of an indicated year.   The figures cover seagoing propelled merchant ships of 100 gross tons and above, excluding inland waterway vessels, fishing vessels (from 2011 onwards only), military vessels, yachts, and offshore fixed and mobile platforms and barges (with the exception of FPSO - floating production, storage and offloading vessels - and drillships). Break in series: from 2011 onwards - (a) data also include the United States and Canada Great Lakes fleets; and (b) figures no longer cover the fishing vessels.