1st meeting of the National Sagarmala Apex Committee held
1st meeting of the National
Sagarmala Apex Committee held
The 1st meeting of the National Sagarmala
Apex Committee (NSAC) under the chairmanship of Sh. 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.
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