Maritime and port strategies as state policies: an introductory approach

By Ricardo Sánchez (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, Kühne Professorial Chair in Logistics, School of Management) and Martín Sánchez-Salvá (Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Core concepts and distinctions

A national maritime strategy is a high-level policy set out primarily by a conceptual framework document, designed to guide action towards a long-term vision for the maritime sector; it sets priorities and organizes goals and instruments aimed at competitiveness, efficiency, security, sustainability, productive development, resilience, and governance. It responds to the issue of what path a country intends to follow in this area, what makes that objective relevant to its national interest and under what principles public and private action should be organised to achieve it.

This definition distinguishes maritime strategy from three instruments with which it is often confused. A master plan operationalises the strategic vision through projects, schedules, and specific investments. An investment strategy responds to corporate performance criteria, not broad national objectives. An institutional strategy organises development in a ministry, port authority or agency, but it does not constitute a national maritime strategy in itself, since it does not express a vision of the State, nor does it articulate multiple sectors cohesively with the policies of productive, industrial, logistical, environmental, technological, labour and territorial development.

A national maritime strategy must be compatible with the forementioned policies, since the maritime facts are integrated into a broader architecture of contemporary development. It therefore operates as a subset of the national grand strategy and must be coherently nestled within other national and regional strategies. UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) distinguishes three types of scope at both national or regional level:

• the maritime security strategy,
• State action at sea strategy, and
• the integrated maritime strategy, which simultaneously incorporates security, governance and maritime economy with the participation of the private sector and civil society.

Context: Why maritime strategies are expanding

The formulation of long-term maritime strategies is now a verifiable international trend, especially since 2014-2015. Four structural pressures converge to explain it:

• geopolitics and supply chain security,
• the energy transition and decarbonisation,
• digitalisation and automation, and
• the competition to capture high value-added maritime activities.

A central vector of this process is the securitisation of maritime space, that is the process by which issues previously considered sectoral come to be defined as threats that justify State responses. Ports, terminals, shipping corridors, logistics data, and supply chains have begun to be treated as assets of economic and national security. This shift elevates the maritime issue politically, expands the number of actors involved and modifies the criteria for public decision-making.

The consequence is that decentralised market action alone is insufficient to manage systemic risks, coordinate critical infrastructure, and sustain competitive advantages in an unstable environment. Maritime strategies are not intended to replace the market, but to provide guidance frameworks that reduce uncertainty, coordinate expectations, and align public and private investments criteria over the long term.

International experience: a synthesis of the studied cases

The comparative evidence covers seventeen countries and one regional bloc, with cases distributed across three types of strategy.

Classification by strategy type

• Integrated maritime cluster strategy: India, China, France, Trinidad and Tobago, Netherlands, Singapore, Hong Kong.
• Mixed strategy (security + port/logistics or Sovereign industrial): United States, Spain, New Zealand, Denmark, European Union, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom.
• Sectoral (port and/or logistics) strategy: Germany, Japan, Chile.

Comprehensive long-range strategies are identified in India, China, France, Trinidad and Tobago, and Panama. The case of India is the most ambitious among developing economies, articulating infrastructure, logistics, blue economy, talent, technology and geoeconomic projection in a generational horizon to 2047. Along with them, the integrated maritime cluster strategies correspond to the Netherlands, Singapore and Hong Kong. The Netherlands consolidated a systemic model where the maritime sector is a strategic component of the national economic model. Singapore articulates port infrastructure, advanced services and digitalisation under a continuous strategic review architecture. Hong Kong concentrates its advantage in maritime finance, arbitration and specialised services.

Maritime security strategies of a hybrid nature are observed in the cases of the European Union, United States, Spain, New Zealand and Denmark. The policies outlined for these cases generally emphasize maritime dominance, inter-institutional governance and the preservation of critical chains, often articulated with regional frameworks or defence alliances. The sovereign industrial strategy type corresponds to Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States (in support of maritime security strategy, in this case). They prioritize the reconstruction of shipbuilding capacities, industrial base and flag fleets as pillars of strategic autonomy. Australia combines this approach with an updated national logistics strategy in 2025.The sectoral type of port strategies corresponds among the studied cases to those of Germany, Chile and Japan, and focuses on port modernisation, digitalisation and decarbonisation, without covering the entire national maritime system.

Panama, Chile and Trinidad and Tobago are the only Latin American cases identified. Panama has had a comprehensive maritime strategy in place since 2009; although it remains fully in force, its implementation has been partial and it now needs updating. Chile’s National Logistics and Port Policy (2026) is the most recent and consolidated sectoral case in the region, with an emphasis on governance, sustainability, and institutional coordination. Trinidad and Tobago has a comprehensive maritime policy that is still in the process of becoming formalised (since 2021).

The following chart showcases the dimensions considered in the analysis of each case.

Table 1. Dimensions covered by each strategy

Source: the author based on the national cases analysed.

Discussion and conclusions

A comparative evaluation confirms that the formulation of long-term maritime strategies is a verifiable trend among the major economies of the international system, and not a sum of isolated experiences. The seventeen cases studied accounted for around 76% of global GDP in 2024. Time horizons vary considerably, from three to more than twenty-five years, but the most effective instruments combine long-term vision with short- and medium-term action mechanisms, periodic reviews, and verifiable targets.

Table 1 showed relevant cross-sectional patterns. Governance is present in all cases, which confirms that any maritime strategy requires some institutional coordination mechanism. Digitalisation and sustainability appear in most instruments. The blue economy is concentrated in the most comprehensive cases. Shipbuilding brings together the countries with the highest sovereign orientation. Specialised maritime services characterize cases that aim to capture value in advanced coordination functions.

An emerging interpretation of public policy trends suggests that the expansion of maritime strategies does not reflect an administrative fad, but rather a method through which certain States comprehend the relationship between market, planning and development, in an environment where decentralised action has become insufficient to manage systemic risks and preserve national interests.

The contrast with Latin America and the Caribbean is significant. The region has very few formally articulated instruments, with even those exhibiting deficiencies in effective implementation, which limits its ability to coordinate ports, logistics, maritime services and governance with other national development policies.

It is crucial to take the cases analysed internationally and act accordingly. A national maritime strategy can play a structural role in the region: ordering investments, reducing logistical vulnerabilities, improving international insertion and expanding capacities for productive, economic and social development in a global environment of unprecedented uncertainty.

The full document is available at: https://substack.com/@ricardojsanchez/p-198296201 (only in Spanish).