Shipbuilding top of mind as Modi underscores India’s maritime ambitions
“SHIPBUILDING is now among India’s top priorities,” India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said during his address at India Maritime Week in Mumbai on Wednesday.
Modi highlighted India’s age-old dominance in shipbuilding, citing 6th century cave paintings depicting designs of a three-masted ship.
His cabinet in September unveiled an $8bn (Rs709bn) plan to fund initiatives that will accelerate India’s shipbuilding ambitions. Foreign investments will play a key role in propelling India as a shipbuilder.
Other initiatives include promoting long-term financing, supporting the development of greenfield and brownfield shipyards, and developing advanced maritime skills among maritime workers.
Additionally, New Delhi also granted infrastructure asset status to large ships to open new avenues for shipbuilders. This will also unlock new investment opportunities.
Shipbuilding has been in focus for many maritime players globally in the past year on the back of geopolitical tensions between the US and China. Chinese shipyards have seen newbuilding orders plummet because of US port fees.
South Korean shipyards have stepped in to capture the lost business, with some shipyards forming deeper collaborations with the US to build shipyards in the US.
Indian shipyards have also taken in more newbuilding orders on the back of this.
Cochin Shipyard two weeks ago secured a landmark deal from French container carrier CMA CGM for six 1,700 teu dual-fuel feeder containerships.
The yard also entered a partnership earlier this year with South Korea’s HD Hyundai Heavy Industries.
But it remains to be seen if US and Chinese port fees will hold, given Thursday’s announcement of a pause on port fees for one year by the US and China.
Newbuilding orders at Indian shipyards will also need to increase substantially for India to become a top-three shipbuilding nation.
Modi also took stock of the progress that India has made in the maritime space.
“Today, India’s ports are counted among the most efficient in the developing world; in many aspects, they are performing even better than those in the developed world,” Modi said.
The Maritime India Vision 2030 started in 2021 and launched 150 initiatives. This has nearly doubled the capacity of important ports and substantially reduced turnaround times according to Modi.
Modi compared India’s averaged container dwell time of less than three days as being better than that of “several developed nations”. Turnaround times have also dropped from 96 hours to 48 hours.
Modi also thanked PSA Singapore for its investment into expanding the Bharat Mumbai Container Terminal at Jawaharlal Nehru.
Looking ahead, Modi has set high targets of quadrupling the capacity of major Indian ports while increasing India’s share in handling containerised cargo.
In development is the new Vadhavan port in the state of Maharashtra which will be able to handle 23m teu a year. This would put Vadhavan into the top 10 biggest container ports in the world.
Modi stated that the cost of building the port was around $8.5bn.
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