ARTICLEoverall development of blue Economy.The logistics cost in India is more than 14% of the GDPand it is one of the highest in the world. The governmenthas set an objective to bring this down to less than10%. With this in view, the inland waterways will be developedacross the country for the transportation and20,000 KMs are likely to be developed and already fewNational waterways were opened for transportation ofcargo. The focus of Inland waterways will be transportof bulk items like Steel, Coal, cement, Iron ore, Agriculturalcommodities.The Sagarmala Programme covers investment of ₹8.5trillion to set up new mega ports, modernizing India’s existingports, developing of 14 Coastal Economic Zones“Prime Minister set a vision of achieving$ 5 trillion GDP within a short periodof time. Blue Economy can contributeto $ 1 trillion of GDP . We can have BlueEconomy Vision of $ 1 tillion.”To increase the pace of growth through Blue Economy,plans could be drawn up to create Ports with city and Industrialdevelopment similar to Singapore and four portsin India could be identified to replicate the model andsuccess of Singapore.One of the challenges for achieving this growth will bearranging finance for such large projects. The options forraising the required financial resources could include,lease of operating Port assets to generate revenue fornew projects, issue of Blue Bonds ( already issued bySeychelles ), attracting FDI from leading players in BlueEconomy in the world, issuing special bonds focussedon port based projects apart from the traditional sourcesof funding.Considering the new found thrust on this concept, wewill have opportunities arising in the developing the areasof Automobiles, Engines, Inland water TransportationVessels, Renewable energy, Security, InfrastructureDevelopment , River based projects, Water based projects,Lubricants and Marine oil, Banking and FinancialServices.We should use the long coast line and rivers in Indiato achieve the desired target of $ 1 trillion through andthe government initiatives in place will go a long way inachieving the target and all the stake holders should begeared to achieve this target. The government can createa programme to propagate the vision of $ 1 trillionto all the stake holders which will help to achieve thetarget very fast.(CEZs) and Coastal Employment Units, enhancing portconnectivity via road, rail, multi-modal logistics parks,pipelines & waterways and promoting coastal communitydevelopment, with the aim of boosting merchandiseexports by US$110 billion and generating around10,000,000 direct and indirect jobs.Sagarmala aims to modernize India’s Ports so that portleddevelopment can be augmented and coastlines canbe developed to contribute to India’s growth. It alsoaims at “transforming the existing Ports into modernworld-class Ports and integrate the development of thePorts, the Industrial clusters and hinterland and efficientevacuation systems through road, rail, inland and coastalwaterways resulting in Ports becoming the drivers ofeconomic activity in coastal areas.January January 2020 2020 | | Littoral Wind | | 28 3
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