Portall Infosystems Pvt Ltd, a unit of logistics conglomerate JM Baxi Group, has won a contract from the government to build and run a National Logistics Portal – Marine for the government.

NLP-Marine will be a pan India single window platform that seeks to help exporters, importers and service providers exchange documents seamlessly and transact business in a transparent and quick manner.

The government had called for bids last September for the design, development, integration, implementation, operation and maintenance of the National Logistics Portal - Marine Version 1.0.

“The letter of intent has been issued to Portall and a formal contract will be signed soon,” a government official said. “It’s a big initiative by the government; a massive step forward for India’s logistics and trade community,” he added.

Portal Infosystems bid for the contract in partnership with Germany’s dbh Consulting GmbH and Inspirisys Solutions Ltd. Inspirisys Solutions is a unit of Japan’s CAC Holdings Corporation.

The project aims to bootstrap the current Port Community System (PCS 1x) run by Portall for the government and mould it to the industry’s needs to cater to the national single window platform for all the marine trade stakeholders.

Ease of doing business

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, give access to latest technology to all stakeholders, large and small, thereby increasing competition, according to the tender documents.

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.

Single window

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 which 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 the payments which are required for the clearance process of import and export like CFS charges, shipping line charges, transportation charges etc.

It will be the first of its kind to provide B2B (Business to Business) and B2G (Business to Government) services.

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