A total of 44 new tugboats were registered in the Greek registry during the period from 2021 to 2024, according to a response from the competent Directorate of the Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy Ministry to a relevant question from the Hellenic Shipowners’ Association of Tugs, Salvage, Antipollution and OSVs.
According to the Association, this number is impressive and constitutes a record for a single category of the Greek merchant fleet in such a period of time, given that it is equivalent to approximately 40% of the total active fleet of tugboats under the Greek flag. In fact, 28 of them were registered over the last two years.
The president of the Association, Pavlos Xiradakis, stated in this regard: “The number of 44 tugboats registered clearly demonstrates that the sector has now entered, and indeed irreversibly, a deep, radical path of modernization and reform for the benefit, first and foremost, of safety in the provision of towing services in our homeland.
Clearly, the basis of this extremely important development lies in Presidential Decree 83/2022, which we supported, in the name not only of safety, but also of the transparency that is required to prevail in the towing sector.
The numbers justify our choice. The 44 tugboats registered also prove, in the most emphatic way, that the decree neither sent us to the rocks, as some ‘professionals’ in the industry claim, nor did it create more problems than those it tried to solve, as the Hellenic Chamber of Commerce unfortunately claimed”.
