The Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) has earmarked around 25 projects, involving cargo transportation of major private and public sector companies, for private sector participation on the three national waterways operational in the country. The projects include vessel operations and creation of terminals on build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis for movement of Hindustan Lever's cargo from Pandu to Kolkata, transportation of petroleum-oil-lubricants (POL) from Numaligarh Refinery and movement of cement to Bangladesh from various cement companies including Raymond Cement.
Vessel operation and construction of terminals for transporting POL for oil majors Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum, Bharat Petroleum inside Kerala on National Waterway-3 (NW-3), movement of furnace oil from Haldia to Farakka for National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) and transportation of Arvind Mills' denim consignments on NW-2 are some of the other project which IWAI plans to give out to private players.
There are three operational national waterways in the country -- the 1,620 km National Waterway-1 (NW-1) stretching between Allahabad and Haldia on the Ganges, the 891 km National Waterway-2 (NW-2) between Dhubri and Sadiya on the Brahmaputra and 205 km West Coast Canal (NW-3) in Kerala.
Other projects earmarked for private sector participation include vessel operation and terminal development for transporting cargo belonging to the Jute Corporation of India and Hindustan Fertilizer Corporation from Pandu (in UP) to Haldia (in West Bengal) on NW-1, moving coal for Bongaigaon Refinery on NW-2 in Assam and transporting tea from various tea companies from Dibrugarh and Tezpur in Assam to Haldia and Kolkata.
For upgradation of infrastructure in the sector, IWAI had called for expression of interest (EOI) from private players for dredging work on a turnkey basis on NW-1 and NW-2 earlier this year. It has earmarked the upgradation and operationalisation of intermodal container terminals at seven places on NW-1 and NW-2, entailing an approximate investment of Rs 40-50 crore per project for private sector participation.
India has an extensive network of waterways, which covers over 15,000 km, but only around 20 per cent of it has been explored so far. The current share of inland waterway transport (IWT) is about 1.5 billion tonne km, which is insignificant compared with the total inland cargo of over 1,000 billion tonne km. Cost of transportation among water, rail and roadways works out to be in the ratio of 1:2:5 while energy consumption ratio comes out to be 1:1.5:4, thereby calling for the need for development of waterways in a big way.
To raise IWT's share in cargo transportation, higher investment in fairway development, provision of terminals, aids for round-the-clock navigation and fleet are required, warranting increased budgetary support and private sector participation. The shipping ministry has implemented a new inland water transport policy to encourage large-scale private participation, both for the creation of infrastructure and for fleet operations.
The new policy provides major opportunities for private sector to make investments in construction and operations of vessels and terminals, storage, loading and unloading facilities, mechanised cargo handling systems, fairway development including dredging, provision of navigational aids and pilotage services. The private investors will be allowed to fix their own charges to be levied from users for the services, even though IWAI will have the option of regulating tariffs.
