Comments
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has pulled up the Government for not ensuring a “level playing field” for Indian shipping players such as SCI, GESCO, Essar, Mercator, Varun Shipping.
The “vital” policy issues where Government’s “indecision” has led loss of Indian tonnage for the sector include difficult tax regime, grant of infrastructure status to the industry, empowering the Transchart to fix share of cargo to be moved by Indian vessels.
In a report tabled in Parliament on Monday, CAG has also criticised the Government for not taking a decision on the Indian National Shipowners’ Association (INSA) demand to provide preferential treatment to Indian flag vessels owned by Indian shipowners. INSA has been negotiating for a preferential treatment for long term chartering agreement by PSUs for critical energy cargoes of crude oil, petroleum products and gas.
“There is a need to expedite action on above concerns to provide Indian shipping players a level playing field to facilitate them to compete effectively with global players’” CAG has stated in its performance audit report on the Shipping Corporation of India (SCI).
Lack of Government support has resulted in decline in the share of Indian ships in the carriage of country’s overseas trade to eight per cent in 2008-09 from 14 per cent (2005-06). The decline was despite a 34 per cent increase country’s overseas trade during the period.
Comments
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.