15/11/2019 - Geography | Current Affairs

IAS Parliament 4 years

KEY POINTS

· Enabling freight to be transported through modes other than roads and railways is key to reducing costs and making Indian goods more competitive in global markets. Waterways has till now been the missing link.

· The cost of freight movement by road is Rs 2.58 per ton-kilometre, compared with Rs 1.41 per ton-km for rail and Rs 1.06 per ton-km for waterways.

· Coastal shipping and inland waterways account for barely 7 per cent of freight transport in India, compared with 24 per cent in China and 11 per cent in Germany.

· The over-reliance on roads has meant that the cost of logistics as a share of the price of final goods is around 18 per cent in India, compared with just 9-10 per cent in developed countries.

· In 2015 it launched the ambitious Sagarmala project to develop water freight transport. The project involved developing new ports, enhancing port connectivity and port linked industrialization. Augmenting inter-modal connectivity is especially important.

· Amendments passed to the Central Road Fund Act in 2017 aimed to use 2.5 per cent of the funds collected for waterways development (India currently has 14,500 km of navigable inland waterways).

· The government has also put in motion the Jal Marg Vikas project to enhance commercial navigation of vessels of size 1,500-2,000 tons on National Waterway-I between Haldia and Varanasi.

Need of the hour

· Incentivising industries adjacent to national waterways to use water transport is also an option.

· At the other end, governments could also impose heavier taxes for long-haul road transport of coal and inflammable material and ‘nudge’ transporters to shift to waterways for long-haul carriage.

· For a long time, the focus was on encouraging shippers to move from roads to railways. But with investments in Sagarmala taking off and other enabling policy changes getting the go-ahead, it looks like it will actually be waterways.