The Hindu Business Line : Sops for inland water transport likely

The incentives being considered included viability gap funding, duty-free bunkers for inland vessels, duty-free import of equipment and machinery related to the sector and other incentives for inland water operators

Mumbai , Oct. 11

In order to shift a slice of traffic from the Indian road and rails to inland waterways, the Government will shortly come out with a comprehensive package of incentives to encourage private participation in inland water transportation.

Incentives

Speaking at the India Shipping Summit here, Mr Susheel Kumar, Vice-Chairman of Inland Waterways Authority of India, said the incentives being considered included viability gap funding, duty-free bunkers for inland vessels, duty-free import of equipment and machinery related to the sector and other incentives for inland water operators.

The IWAI was also willing to take equity participation in joint ventures with private operators to implement some of the projects, with a view to giving the operators additional confidence, he pointed out.

According to Mr Kumar, while road transportation accounted for 54 per cent of the total inland transportation of 1,000 billion tonne-km, railway accounted for 34.4 per cent, coastal transportation 7 per cent and pipeline 4 per cent, inland water had a measly share of only 0.2 per cent.

"This is unfortunate, especially in view of the large potential that India had in the inland water sector," he pointed out. He said even in Netherlands, Germany and the US, inland water transportation had a share of 42 per cent, 14 per cent and 15 per cent respectively in the transportation pies of those countries.

Stating that inland water transportation was the most fuel-efficient means of transportation, Mr Kumar said the fuel efficiency in road transportation was 25 tonne-km per litre and rail transportation 80 tonne-km per litre, while in the case of inland water transportation it was 105 tonne-km per litre.