Shipping Companies, the Economy and the State

What were the relationships among these highly successful, internationally active shipping companies with the Greek economy and the Greek state? The shipping sector has always been the most internationalized branch of the Greek economy and was decisive in its development.41 The peculiarity of the shipping business, participating in the international freight markets, is that its income is produced outside Greece; shipping capital flows into Greece from abroad and has little relation to the productive structures of the country. But public opinion considers the ties of the shipping industry with Greece as close or loose depending on the appearance of the Greek flag on ships and of the rise and fall of foreign exchange from shipping, as this appears in the accounts of the Bank of Greece. Indeed, the fact that a large part of Greek shipping activities is carried out abroad has reinforced the view that shipping has had very little influence on shaping the economic structures of the country. As a consequence of the above, analyses of the economy of Greece refer very little or scarcely at all to shipping.42 However, from its founding, the role of the modern Greek state was crucial to forming the Greek shipping industry. Since the mid-1970s, a series of studies has appeared on the course of Greek shipping and its relations with the Greek state from its founding to the present day (Kremmydas, 1985, Kardasis, 1993, Papathanasopoulos, 1983, Harlaftis, 1996).