New Delhi: The 1st meeting of the National Sagarmala Apex Committee (NSAC) under the chairmanship of Nitin Gadkari, Minister for Shipping and Road Transport & Highways was held on 5th October, 2015.
The meeting was attended by Union Ministers from Ministries of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation; Railways; Rural Development; Civil Aviation; Petroleum & Natural Gas, Environment, Forests & Climate Change; and Vice Chairman of Niti Aayog, besides Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Goa, and State Ministers/ Port Ministers of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Odisha and Tamil Nadu.
The National Sagarmala Apex Committee provides overall policy guidance and high level coordination, approves and reviews various aspects of planning and implementation of the National Perspective Plan.
Sagarmala programme seeks to achieve the Prime Minister’s vision of port led development by focusing on port modernization and capacity augmentation, efficient and speedy evacuation; port led industrial development and coastal community development.
While reviewing the progress made in taking this national initiative forward, Minister for Shipping & RTH stated that a platform for central, state governments and local authorities has been established in order to work in tandem under the established principles of “cooperative federalism”, in order to achieve the objectives of the Sagarmala Programme and ensure port-led development.
One of the focus areas of the conference was to highlight the opportunities emerging from the origin destination study of coal. It was highlighted that there is a potential to transport 100 MMTPA of thermal coal by coastal shipping as against the present volume of 23 MMTPA by 2020.
This will lead to an annual savings of about Rs. 7000 Crore in coal logistics cost by 2020 and will also free up approximately 80,000 rake days which can be effectively utilized. This step has the potential to reduce cost of power generation by 15 per cent will give a boost to manufacturing sector.
The critical rail, inland waterways and port projects to facilitate this movement by coastal shipping was also discussed in the meeting.
Besides, thermal coal, opportunities as identified under the work done so far on National Perspective Plan for POL, EXIM Container and steel were also deliberated by the committee. It was appraised that against the current bunkering volume of 1.8 MMTPA, it has potential to go up to 12 MMTPA.
While approving the approach and methodology of the preparation of the National Perspective Plan [NPP] and the identification of “Early Bird “projects till the finalization of the NPP, the NSAC also provided direction and guidance for the integrated development of India’s maritime sector.
The state governments have expressed their full support in collaborating with the central government in planning and execution of this critical project.
The committee also deliberated on emerging opportunities from benchmarking study which has been conducted for improving the operational efficiency of major ports.
The potential benefits from the above opportunities include freeing up of approximately 100 MMT port capacity from existing infrastructure, generating Rs.1000 Crore additional operating surplus and avoiding Rs.1,100 Crore of capital expenditure through improved port efficiency. For achieving these 104 initiatives have been identified for execution across the major ports over a period of three years.
