Hyderabad: The Indian maritime and logistics sectors received substantial budgetary allocations focused on container manufacturing, dedicated freight corridors, inland waterways, and ship repair facilities to support the newly-announced Bharat Container Line.
In her ninth consecutive budget, Nirmala Sitharaman also announced that home-grown companies are set to receive Rs 10,000 crore over the next five years. There is also an additional outlay of Rs 5,164 crore for government-run major ports and changes to customs processes.
But what has headlined the shipping industry’s budget is the hefty budgetary allocation to boost container manufacturing in the country. In her speech, the minister highlighted that funds would be released over five years towards making India “a globally competitive container manufacturing ecosystem”.
According to maritime industry estimates, India’s container manufacturing capacity of twenty-foot and forty-foot stands at 30,000 units as compared to China’s six million units annually.
“To be featured amongst the top strategic and frontier sectors is a first for the shipping and container industries. This is indeed the need of the hour and the outlay would help not just box manufacturers but also container-based logistics, and help us reduce logistics costs over a period of time,” said Nirav Thakker, treasurer of the Freight Forwarders’ Association of India and director of 24×7 Logistics.
After the finance minister’s announcements, shares of the state-owned Container Corporation of India (Concor) rallied up 2.95% to Rs 505.55 on the National Stock Exchange, while stock prices of Essar Shipping and Dredging Corporation of India reported gains of over 9 per cent each in intraday trade on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).
The Centre has also allocated Rs 5,164 crore for the ports, shipping, and waterways ministry, increasing the outlay by more than 45 per cent as against the budget estimate of Rs 3,470 crore in FY26.
Industry leaders welcomed the budget proposal to operationalise 20 national waterways over the next five years. The National Waterway (NWW) 5 in Odisha connecting the mineral-dense regions of Talcher and Angul will be India’s sixth waterway to commence operations with cargo and people already being transported in five waterways across different regions in India.
To make movement of cargo more viable and profitable by the NWWs and coastal shipping, the government also announced the launch of the Coastal Cargo Promotion Scheme to incentivise a modal shift from roads and rail to waterways. In her speech, the finance minister spoke of raising the share of NWWs and coastal shipping 6 per cent to 12 per cent by 2047.
Training institutes will be set up as regional centres of excellence for development of the required manpower to support NWW and coastal operations, the minister added. A scheme for enhancement of construction and infrastructure equipment (CIE) was also given a mention in the budget speech.
“Today’s policy support validates those early efforts and reinforces the need to support all serious players who contributed to building this sector from the ground up,” said Rahul Modi, founder of Shreyas Shipping (now Transworld Shipping Lines Limited), which was the country’s first coastal shipping firm.
Industry leaders from different segments of the maritime sectors weighed in and called the budget a “holistic approach to India’s maritime transformation” because of the multi-pronged support accorded to improve productivity and profitability of the sector. The establishment of new dedicated freight corridors (DFC), particularly the DFC connecting Dankuni in the east to Surat in the West has been hailed.
“This would help greatly in reducing the logistics cost and increase the ease and speed of doing business,” added Rahul Modi.
Ship repair ecosystems were announced in Varanasi, the Prime Minister’s constituency, and in Patna, where the Bharatiya Janata Party is part of the NDA government.
A viability gap funding scheme, or subsidy, to revive the use of seaplanes has also been introduced in the Budget. This is the government’s second attempt at promoting seaplane flights since 2018 when the proposal was first introduced as part of the UDAN scheme. However, other than a short flight between the Sabarmati river front and the Statue of Unity in Kevadia, no other routes were operational.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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