Shipping ministry to push inland water cargo growth

The ministry of shipping would like to see inland water transport (IWT) volumes grow by more than 10 times in the next ten years to 20 million tonne kilometres (mn.tkm) from about 1.5 mn.tkm today, shipping minister Shatrughan Sinha said here today.

Addressing the media at the Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT) office, Sinha said IWT would save about Rs 1000 crore worth of fuel now being consumed every year to move the same volume of cargo by road or rail.

The minister said he would be inaugurating a cargo feeder service from Haldia to Patna on January 14 even though night navigation facilities along the entire stretch was still being set up.

Later, the feeder service would be extended to Varanasi and then to Allahabad with night navigation back-up.

Shipping secretary D T Joseph said IWT would be the lifeline of all existing ports in India which were currently suffering from problems relating to shallow draft unsuitable for ocean-going vessels.

These ports would have to recast their business plan to become IWT hubs capable from shifting cargo and goods into the interior through the national waterway (NW) system.

Sinha said he would encourage all ports to undertake a SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity and threat) analysis to face up to future challenges.

IWT development would come under the 'Sagarmala' initiative which was the Prime Minister's dream, and would be supplemented by a plan to develop national seaways system of deep-draft ocean channels serving shore-based ports.

India had declared three channels to be NW, with NW1 being the river Ganga, NW2 being the river Brahmaputra and NW3 being the backwater channels of Kerala.

IWT and the three NW channels were technically under the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI), a government entity also under the shipping ministry.