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of the nation. The National Maritime Single Window being developed and the “Ports
for Prosperity” approach adopted in enhancing the connectivity and efficiency of our
ports is central to underline India’s maritime industry making comprehensive
progress due to a range of policy initiatives and reforms that are furthering the “Ease
of doing business” creating state of the art infrastructure benchmarked to
international standards, ensuring new age multimodal connectivity while ensuring
sustainable low energy intensive solutions for logistics.
Several steps such as model concession agreement, revised tariff guidelines
rendering market autonomy in fixing tariffs, according priority to India build vessels
and the Ship Building Financial assistance scheme are all aimed at galvanizing
investment into the maritime sector, Enabling legal framework has been provisioned
with the Major Ports Authorities Act, 2021, the Marine aids to Navigation Act, 2021
and the inland vessels Act 2021 which replaced acts of vintage of nearly over a 100
years. The Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways and the maritime
administrator (Director General of Shipping) has been working to update the
Merchant Shipping Act and a draft Bill has been prepared. India needs to update its
laws to keep up with the pace of technological, social and other changes that will
reflect modern practices not only in the conduct of the business, but also will extend
to modernization of maritime administration, all of which will lead to a growth of the
Indian shipping industry.
The Maritime India Vision 2030 has been launched. It outlines the priorities of the
Government and quantifies the deliverables by FY 2030 which includes capacity
augmentation at major ports, improved turnaround times which are globally
competitive, global leadership in Ship building and recycling and increase in Indian
Seafarers. India is top 5 in trained manpower, 2nd in global recycling and 38th rank in
logistic performance index, 2023. The Indian maritime sector in the next decades will
witness the following growth saga-
(i) 4 X port capacity augmentation with automated terminal operations

(ii) Usage of clean energy fuels hydrogen and alternate fuel hubs
(iii) Cruise leaders in Asia Pacific – witnessing 10 X passenger growth

(iv) Rising to the top in Ship building and repair

(v) Global leader in Ship recycling
(vi) 12% model share (coastal and Inland Water transport) with over 5000 Kms
regional waterway grid.
The third edition of the Global Maritime India Summit held in October 2023 at
Mumbai, attracted rupees 10 lakh crore of investment, which will help in achieving

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