'Steps underway to boost coastal shipping'

A slew of steps are underway to promote coastal shipping including measures to tap global environment fund for creating additional capacities in the sector, the senior government official today said.
"In the past some months the Ministry of Shipping has mounted a very aggressive policy enabling to end impasse in coastal shipping. There was a catch 22 situation with no demand and no vessels but quick decisions in policy issues in the current political environment has given a push to the sector," Shipping Secretary Vishwapati Trivedi said.
Addressing a CII event, Trivedi said the Ministry has undertaken a slew of measures, including efforts tap the World Bank-managed Global Environment Fund (GEF) to promote coastal shipping.

He said at present India occupies 17th slot in global shipping capacity in EXIM trade but efforts were on to enhance it and the Ministry planned to boost coastal shipping four-fold by 2020.
PSUs can take a lead role in boosting coastal shipping, Trivedi said, adding, transportation through waterways resulted in reducing transport cost to one-third of that of the freight movement by Railways.
The objective behind promoting coastal shipping is to decongest roads and reduce the overall transport cost.
India has a coastline over 7000 km long yet coastal shipping in the country is still in its infancy with a fleet of about 700 ships accounting for just about a million GT or 10 per cent of the total Indian tonnage.

India's EXIM cargo in terms of volume is approximately 611 million tonnes (MT) valued at about USD 279 billion.