SAGARMALA

Subject: Economy

Context: Sagarmala development company Ltd will step in to help deploy some of the 24 roll-on, roll-offas well as Ropax owned by Inland Waterways Authority of India.

Concept:

Sagarmala:

• The Sagarmala project seeks to develop a string of ports around India’s coast.
• The objective of this initiative is to promote “Port-led development” along India’s 7500 km long coastline.
• It aims to develop access to new development regions with intermodal solutions and promotion of the optimum modal split, enhanced connectivity with main economic centres and beyond through expansion of rail, inland water, coastal and road services.
• The Union Ministry of Shipping has been appointed as the nodal ministry for this initiative.
• To implement this, State governments would set up State Sagarmala committees, headed by the chief minister or the minister in charge of ports.

Sagarmala Development Company (SDC)

• SDC will be under the administrative control of the Union Ministry of Shipping.
• It will provide equity support to the project Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) and funding support to the residual projects under the Sagarmala Programme.
• Implementation of the identified projects will be taken up mainly through private or PPP mode. It will also provide equity support for the project Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs).
• SDC will mainly identify port-led development projects and assist the project SPVs in project development and structuring activities, bidding out projects for private sector participation.
• SDC will raise long term capital as per project requirements by leveraging resources provided by Union Government and also from multi-lateral and bilateral funding agencies.

Inland Waterways Authority of India      

• Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) is the statutory authority constituted under IWAI Act-1985 by parliament of India. It came into existence o for development and regulation of inland waterways for shipping and navigation.
• It primarily undertakes projects for development and maintenance of IWT infrastructure on national waterways through grants received from the Ministry of Shipping.
• It is headquartered at Noida with regional offices at Patna (Bihar), Kolkata (West Bengal), Guwahati (Assam) and Kochi (Kerala) and sub-offices at other places throughout India.