Maritime Economy: A Strategic Resource for Italy

The sea represents a fundamental component of the Italian economy and an increasingly crucial element for the country's competitiveness. Italian export goods, freight, energy supplies, and a significant portion of tourist flows travel along maritime routes. For this reason, ports, logistics, and shipping constitute a genuine lever of development for the production system.

According to data from the 13th National Report on the Economy of the Sea 2025, in 2025 the supply chain consisted of 232,841 enterprises and generated a direct added value of 76.6 billion euros. Considering the spillover and indirect effects generated across the entire production chain, the overall impact of the Blue Economy in Italy reached 216.7 billion euros, accounting for 11.3% of the national GDP. The Maritime Economy thus confirms itself as a powerful economic engine, capable of producing a high multiplier effect on other industrial and service supply chains.

It is a broad supply chain that encompasses numerous sectors: from fishing to extraction activities, shipbuilding to transport, and logistics to services linked to maritime activities. It is a sector that also has a major impact on the labor market, employing more than 1.1 million people in total.

Within this landscape, Liguria confirms its national leadership in terms of maritime vocation: with 13.8% of its businesses belonging to the blue economy, it ranks as the top region in Italy for the sector's incidence on its local productive fabric. Thanks to a port system comprising Genova, La Spezia, and Savona-Vado that stands among Southern Europe's primary logistics gateways, the region serves as a strategic hinge between international markets and the industrial heart of the continent. In Liguria, the convergence of world-class shipbuilding, shipping, cutting-edge logistics, marine research, and tourism hospitality transforms the sea from a mere geographical asset into a true industrial engine, capable of driving technological innovation, the green transition, and job growth in the territory.

Edited by Rebeca Burgos