Inland Water Transport
India has 14,500 km of navigable waterways - rivers, canals, backwaters, creeks, etc., of which about 3,700 km is navigable by mechanized crafts, but actually only 2,000 km is being used. Inland Water Transport is a priority only for some states such as Kerala, West Bengal, Assam, parts of North Eastern region and Goa where IWT exists in an organized form.  Some states, such as Kerala, are working on specific projects for expanding the IWT infrastructure and integrating it with the other modes of transport. However, in the national context the importance of inland waterways has declined considerably in recent times, mainly due to expansion of road and rail transport, diversion of river water for irrigation, deforestation of hill ranges leading to erosion, accumulation of silt in rivers, and failure to modernize the fleet to suit local conditions. However, the Inland Waterways Authority of India is keen to exploit the advantage of national waterways for creating an intermodal mix with road and rail transport, and also linking the waterways to the ports. 

Port Management
India has a long coastline of 7,517 kms, serviced by 12 major ports and 187 minor and intermediate ports (including 139 minor working ports).  The 12 major ports, with an aggregate capacity of 389.50 million tonnes, handle 75% of India’s total port traffic. Eleven major ports are governed by the provisions of Major Port Trust Act, 1963 and the twelfth, Ennore Port, is the first major corporate port. The minor and intermediate ports are controlled by the respective states.

The traffic handled at the ports has been growing steadily over the past decade. Following the liberalisation and opening of the Indian economy in the early 1990s, there has been a significant increase in India’s maritime trade, with traffic increasing from 165 million tonnes in 1991 to over 500 million tonnes in 2004-05. The Ministry of Shipping projects the port traffic to grow to a level of 650 million tonnes by 2008. As a result, the Indian ports require capacity expansion on a large scale. As opposed to the growth of 3.5-4% in global trade, India has been registering a 10%+ growth in containerised cargo and a 6% growth in bulk cargo. India’s 3.9 million TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units) in 2004-05 is expected to grow to 4.4 million TEUs in 2005-06 accounting for 5-6 per cent of cargo in Asia.

Inland Water Transport: The Government of India has decided to give 90% grant instead of 50% reimbursable loan to States for development of the Inland Water Transport Sector.  For this, the Government has sought assistance from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank for Inland Water Transport Development.

The IWAI has been empowered to enter into commercial/joint ventures to encourage investment in this sector and also to raise tax-free bonds for mobilising funds from market as provided for other infrastructure sectors.

Extensive investment required for modernization of almost all the existing ports.  In addition, to facilitate coastal movement, about 20 additional ports are required along the coastline. 

The Asian Development Bank has initiated a technical assistance mission for the Inland Waterways Transport sector, providing US $ 1.125 million for appointing consultants for updating studies and preparation of IWT investment projects before sanctioning assistance.

National Maritime Development Programme (NMDP)
This programme, to be completed over the next 10 years through public-private partnership, envisages an investment of over US$ 13.33 billion for augmenting the present capacity and modernisation of the existing ports

Sagar Mala Project
The Sagar Mala project is estimated to bring an investment of about US $ 22 billion over a ten-year period. Under this scheme, many individual port development plans would now be strung together in a ‘mala’, (thread).