Sagarmala Port Development

The Sagarmala initiative will address  these challenges by  focusing on three pillars of development, namely (i) Supporting and enabling Port-led Development through appropriate policy and institutional interventions and  providing for an institutional framework for ensuring inter-agency and ministries/departments/states’ collaboration for integrated development, (ii) Port Infrastructure Enhancement, including modernization and setting up of new ports, and (iii) Efficient Evacuation to and from hinterland.

Sagarmala will also lead to large scale employment generation of skilled and semi-skilled manpower. Employment generation will be in industrial clusters and parks, large ports, maritime services, logistics services, and other sectors of the economy that will be directly and indirectly impacted by port-led development under Sagarmala.  Manufacture of ships, vessels, cruise ships, barges and tugs will also increase industrial output and also contribute to employment generation.

Implementation of Sagarmala will also result in effective steps to ensure sustainable development of the population living in the Coastal Economic Zones (CEZ) by synergising and coordinating with State Governments and line Ministries of Central Government through their existing schemes and programmes such as those related to community and rural development, tribal development and employment generation, fisheries, skill development, tourism promotion etc.  Today about 70 lakhs persons are dependent on fisheries for their livelihood

 

CONCEPT OF PORT-LED DEVELOPMENT

A prime objective of the Sagarmala project is thus to promote port-led direct and indirect development and to provide infrastructure to transport goods to and from ports quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively.  Therefore, the Sagarmala Project shall, inter alia, aim to develop access to new  development regions with intermodal solutions and promotion of the optimum modal split, enhanced connectivity with the main economic centres and beyond through expansion of the rail, inland water, coastal and road services. 

In order to do a comprehensive and integrated planning for “Sagarmala”, a National Perspective Plan (NPP) for the entire coastline shall be prepared within six months which will identify potential geographical regions to be called Coastal Economic Zones (CEZs). While preparing the NPP, synergy and integration with the planned Industrial Corridors, Dedicated Freight Corridors, National Highway Development Programme, Industrial Clusters and SEZs would be ensured. Detailed Master Plans will be prepared for the identified Coastal Economic Zones leading to identification of projects and preparation of their detailed project reports.

An illustrative list of the kind of development projects that could be undertaken in Sagarmala initiative are (i)            Port-led industrialization (ii) Port based urbanization (iii) Port based and coastal tourism and recreational activities (iv) Short-sea shipping coastal shipping and Inland Waterways Transportation (v) Ship building, ship repair and ship recycling (vi) Logistics parks, warehousing, maritime zones/services (vii) Integration with hinterland hubs (viii)  Offshore storage, drilling platforms (ix) Specialization of ports in certain economic activities such as energy, containers, chemicals, coal, agro products, etc. (x) Offshore Renewable Energy Projects with base ports for installations (xi)  Modernizing the existing ports and development of new ports. This strategy incorporates both aspects of port-led development viz. port-led direct development and port-led indirect development.

 

   Presently, Indian ports handle more than 90% of India’s total EXIM trade volume. However, the current proportion of merchandize trade in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of India is only 42%, whereas for some developed countries and regions in the world such as Germany and European Union, it is 75% and 70% respectively.  Therefore, there is a great scope to increase the share of merchandising trade in India’s GDP.  With the Union Government’s “Make in India” initiative, the share of merchandise trade in India’s GDP is expected to increase and approach levels achieved in developed countries.  India lags far behind in ports and logistics infrastructure.  Against a share of 9% of railways and 6% of roads in the GDP the share of ports is only 1%. In addition high logistics costs make Indian exports uncompetitive.  Therefore Sagarmala project has been envisioned to provide ports and the shipping the rightful place in the Indian economy and to enable port-led development. 

Amongst Indian states, Gujarat has been a pioneer in adopting the strategy of port-led development, with significant results.  While in the 1980’s the state grew at only 5.08% per year (National average was 5.47%), this accelerated to 8.15% per annum in the 1990’s (All India average 6.98%) and subsequently to more than 10 percent per annum, substantially benefitting from the port-led development model.