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Portall Infosystems, a unit of logistics conglomerate JM Baxi Group, has emerged the front-runner to build and run the government’s National Logistics Portal – Marine — a pan India single window platform that is to help exporters, importers and service providers exchange documents seamlessly and transact business transparently and quickly.
In September 2020, the Indian Ports Association, a think tank for the Ministry of Ports, invited bids for the design, development, integration, implementation, operation and maintenance of the National Logistics Portal - Marine Version 1.0.
Apart from Portall, a consortium of DP World and Infosys was also shortlisted for the project that aims to bootstrap the current Port Community System (PCS 1x) and mould it to cater to the needs of maritime trade stakeholders.
Portall tops the table
Portall, which currently runs the PCS1x for the government, is understood to have secured the highest total score as per the Quality cum Cost Based System (QCBS) evaluation criteria set by the IPA, a government official said.
The NLP-Marine is being developed to facilitate ease of doing business and make India one of the most cost-effective and competitive countries in international trade, promote transparency in accessing information across the supply chain for all stakeholders, remove bottlenecks, empower end-users with real-time decision-making tools, and give access to latest technology to all stakeholders, large and small, thereby increasing competition.
NLP mainly aims to function as a central system for electronic sharing and exchange with interoperability across ocean, air, rail, inland waterways and coastal movement of goods.
“It’s a big initiative by the government; a massive step forward for India’s logistics and trade community,” a government official said.
The national single-window logistics platform will be designed to perform all core activities of the importer, exporter and Customs broker such as domestic tracking of the shipment with notifications at each stage, undertake Customs clearance on their own, online transaction with custodians, remote electronic data interchange (EDI) system package – for Bill of Entry and Shipping Bill checklist plus electronic data interchange (EDI) file generation and document management system to store all the important documents securely on cloud storage.
It will facilitate real time information of the activities that are generally not in reach of the importer, exporter, Customs broker including vessel related information, terminal gate and container freight station (CFS) gate transactions.
It will also enable digital transaction for all payments in the clearance process of import and export such as container freight station (CFS) and shipping line charges.
It will be the first of its kind national platform to provide B2B (Business to Business) and B2G (Business to Government) services.
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