On behalf of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications Menon Economics has benchmarked Estonia as a maritime center along five pillars and corresponding indicators. The five pillars are (i) shipping centers, (ii) maritime finance and law, (iii) maritime technology, (iv) ports and logistics, and (v) attractiveness and competitiveness. The background for the project is that the Ministry wants to acquire a knowledge base of how they can increase the size and economic importance of their maritime industry. When assessing the five pillars of the maritime industry and comparing Estonia to other leading maritime cities in the world, Estonia ranks as the 100^th leading maritime center in the world out of the roughly 15,000 cities tracked in the Leading Maritime Cities (LMC) report. There is wide variation in how Estonia scores on each of the five pillars. Its highest ranking is on the attractiveness and competitiveness pillar and the lowest is on the shipping center pillar.

Based on the findings of this report, there are some measures Estonia could take to increase the competitiveness of its maritime industry. These are related to the following: (i) Enhancing Estonia as a flag state, (ii) the importance of a strong cluster, (iii) the industry’s attractiveness will be important to attract relevant competence, (iv) interaction between the industry and academia and (v) opportunities related to the offshore wind market.