Govt will come out with new shipbuilding policy soon: Shipping Minister

From being 22nd in the world right now, India will endeavour to be among the top 10 shipbuilding nations by 2030 and top five by 2047, with a new shipbuilding policy that will be unveiled soon, Sonowal said in a post-budget interaction. The ministry has been working on a shipbuilding policy, for which it had sought stakeholder comments on broad-based policy directives in the first week of July. In a presentation prepared by KPMG for the ministry, it suggested a host of measures to boost indigenous shipbuilding.

Reported earlier this month that the ministry has proposed to put a mandatory Make In India clause for manufacturing of coastal vessels starting 2030.

“We had been requesting GST and custom duty changes which will help the industry and bring export competitiveness and cost reduction. There have also been custom duty relaxations for components and consumables for manufacturing of vessels,” said Shipping Secretary T.K. Ramachandran, who was present with the minister with other senior officials from the ministry.

“Earlier, we had a short timeframe in which to complete ship repairs, which has now been extended to one year. Similarly, warranty being extended from three to five years and time limit for import of replacements in ship repair has been liberalised,” he added.

The industry had shown several concerns about the policy, which are now being deliberated on by the ministry before it unveils the final policy. Under the shipbuilding policy deliberations, the ministry had proposed a shipbreaking credit note scheme, under which issue of credit note amounting to 40 per cent of the scrap value of ship undergoing breakage at Indian shipbreaking shipyard would be issued, with the credit note being reimbursable for construction of a new commercial ship.

It had also proposed single window operations for the setting up of new shipyards, setting up of Common Facility Centres through public private partnership, establishment of common maritime assets that facilitate modular multi-location construction of pre outfitted hull blocks of ships, and an empowered committee to oversee shipbuilding reforms.