Shipping awaits its dream budget
The Hindu
Explore the challenges and potential of India's shipping industry, highlighting the need for bold initiatives and policy changes.
Shipping is a high-volume, cash-heavy business dealing almost exclusively in foreign exchange where margin percentages are often low but can be surprisingly high too sometimes. India’s top regulators, policymakers and tax authorities have not shown a real appreciation of its nuances.
India has a glorious history of shipbuilding and owning that the British destroyed even as they took control of the country. They then squelched efforts to rebuild the native shipping industry into the 20th century. More than 100 years after the British stamped out V O Chidambaram Pillai’s swadeshi shipping initiative, India still does not have a robust shipowning, shipbuilding ecosystem.
Some in the past in India did see shipping as a crucial component of reinforcing national sovereignty and there were some stellar efforts. But, today, shipping in India continues to be a consequence of global shipping trends and governed largely by decisions made outside India.
In the last ten years, the total tonnage of India has only gone down. Practically no merchant ship is built today in India. China has become the world’s No 1 shipbuilder while we have the biggest scrapyards.
Among the positives are the emergence of many Indian ship management companies that are, however, mostly registered and operating outside India, and Indian seafarers who bring in vital foreign exchange.
Budget 2024-25 did contain several measures to support Indian shipping. The Economic Survey spoke about ship leasing structures in Gift City in Gujarat and how that is a model. That shipping is being talked about is a welcome sign and an indicator that decision-makers in the government are indeed interested in its development.
Among the details in the budget was removing customs duty on imported ship spares which is highly welcome. The previous set of laws led to arbitrary demands at customs and many shipping companies suffered severely as a result. And those laws were themselves indicative of how successive governments had little interest in shipping.
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