'India has set goal of increasing seafarers strength to 9 pc'

India has set a goal of increasing its seafarers strength to nine per cent of global maritime personnel as against seven per cent at present, Shipping Minister G K Vasan said here today. "The vision document of the Ministry of Shipping for a period of 10 years, the Maritime Agenda 2020, which was launched in January 2011 has set a goal of increasing the strength of our seafarers to nine per cent," he said. India accounts for a market share of around seven per cent of the global maritime personnel, he said at the first anniversary of the "Sagar Sandesh", a maritime tabloid English weekly newspaper, brought out by R Lakshmipathy, Publisher of 'Dinamalar'. 'Port to Port', a website aimed at providing online ship sailing schedules for the benefit of EXIM traders was also launched on the occasion. Noting that the country faced a great demand to increase the number of marine engineers as a result of the high quality output of engineering cadets, Vasan said about 3,000 marine engineers on an average are trained every year. He said despite the global slowdown which had hit the shipping and maritime sectors, the contribution of India's external trade as proportion of GDP was close to 40 per cent. "Almost 95 per cent by volume and 70 per cent by value of this external trade is effected through the sea route", he said. Speaking on the occasion, Lakshmipathy said the website would be a bridge between stakeholders and decision makers and would mitigate difficulties faced by shipping industry.