Centre asks states to set up maritime boards

Government wants to expedite Sagarmala Project

Aiming to expedite the Sagarmala Project — a port-led direct and indirect development plan —  the Centre has asked several coastal states to set up maritime boards and sanction required lands at the earliest.

The Ministry of Shipping in its communication to the states said that only Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have set up maritime boards.

While the process of setting up such boards are on in Karnataka, Kerala, Odisha and Andaman and Nicobar, the governments of West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Puducherry and Goa are yet to start working on it.

Whatever the approvals required from the Ministry of Home Affairs to set up such boards will be expedited, a senior official in the Ministry of Shipping told Deccan Herald adding that the states have to start the process immediately.

As the Sagarmala Port led development plan involves improving infrastructure along the country’s 7, 500 km coastline, the Centre has requested the states to allot required land near ports for setting up industrial clusters, manufacture zones, marine clusters like ship-building, ship-breaking activities, clusters of refinery, petrochemical projects and cement plants.

The government has set the target of completing 30 projects with an investment of Rs 15,000 crore in 2015-16 and already 14 projects awarded to create additional port capacity of about 33 million tonne.

The government is expecting an investment of more than Rs 70,000 crore in coming years for the project. While most of this investment is expected to be made by government, some projects, including development of islands and tourism facilities, would be taken up in public-private partnership (PPP) mode, an official said.

The project plan also includes connecting ports with inland waterways. The government will set up 14 coastal economic zones and a special economic zone at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust in Mumbai. Free trade warehousing zones will be set up in Cochin and Ennore.

The government will also set up eight automobile industrial zones at ports to recycle vehicles that are more than 10 years old.

Under the project, the government also plans to set up 12 smart cities at a cost of Rs 50,000 crore, said the official.