SME Times News Bureau | 05 Feb, 2011
"The Ministry of Shipping is working on a new policy to promote coastal shipping and also in the process of formulating a package for promoting Indian ship building industry," said  G K Vasan, Union Minister for Shipping, while delivering his inaugural address at the "Ports and Maritime Investment & Business Conclave" organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in New Delhi on Friday.

Vasan said that the Maritime Agenda released by the Ministry recently, which is a vision document for the next 10 years has set some important goals like increasing port capacity to around 3200 million tonnes - which will require an investment of about Rs. 3 lakh crore; to enhance the Indian tonnage four fold to 43 million GT by 2020, improve India’s share in global shipbuilding to 5% and increase the share of Indian sea farers to at least 10 %.

In the last two years, nearly 22 public private partnership projects have been awarded at a total investment of about Rs. 9077 crores. To facilitate private sector investment, we have put in place a favourable and investor friendly policy framework, which includes a 100 % FDI in shipping and port sector, said Vasan.

Vasan said that the Government is proposing to develop Colachel Port which has a deep draft and is strategically located close to the International maritime routes.

He also said that the Shipping Ministry has brought out a new land policy and a policy to prevent monopoly in ports.

The conclave was attended by other senor private and government officials and by over 250 delegates from the port and maritime sector from across the country.