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The first phase of the National Logistics Portal (NLP) — a digital platform to bring all stakeholders in the logistics sector on board to cut down transaction cost and time for businesses — is likely to be implemented by March, a government official said.
“The Department of Commerce, which is designing the portal, has already received an approval of the ‘proof of concept’ from a Committee of Secretaries and is now working on the detailed project report,” a government official associated with the project told BusinessLine .
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, in his Budget speech this year, had announced that the Department of Commerce will create a portal which will be a single window online market place for trade and will connect business, create opportunities and bring together various ministries, departments and the private sector.
Four main components
Stakeholders like traders, manufacturers, logistics service providers, infrastructure providers, financial services, government departments and groups and associations will all be on one platform, once the portal is created. There are four main components of the portal which include a logistics e-market place, a logistics certification platform, an integrated regulatory platform and a banking and financial services platform.
“In the first phase, we seek to implement the logistics e-market place. The other three components would subsequently follow,” the official said.
The logistics e-market place will allow a trader or exporter to plan end to end shipment route, check availability, enquire the rates make bookings for a wide range of services such as freight forward, ocean freight, truck, warehouse, air freight, ICD services and packaging services, exchange e-contract, generate invoice, pay electronically, and monitor physical flow of goods.
Complex sector
India’s logistics sector is highly defragmented and the aim is to reduce the logistics cost from the present 14 per cent of GDP to less than 10 per cent by 2022, according to an official release of the Commerce Ministry. “India’s logistics sector is very complex with more than 20 government agencies, 40 partnering government agencies, 37 export promotion councils, 500 certifications, 10,000 commodities, $160 billion market size,” it stated.
It also involves 12 million employment base, 200 shipping agencies, 36 logistic services, 129 ICDs, 168 CFSs, 50 IT ecosystems and banks & insurance agencies.
According to the Economic Survey 2017-18, the logistics sector provides livelihood to more than 22 million people and improving the sector will facilitate 10 per cent decrease in indirect logistics cost leading to the growth of 5-8 per cent in exports. The survey estimates that the worth of Indian logistics market would be around $215 billion in the next two years compared to about $160 billion now.
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