The government, amid the coronavirus setback, has renewed its focus on infrastructure and logistics sector as it looks to push the economic growth and turn the pandemic into an opportunity in the longer run. While it is believed that large companies are eyeing on India, it’s the competitive cost and logistics that stands in the way as a disadvantage.
In his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasised on giving a new direction to infrastructure development and had rued that there is no coordination between the various modes of transportation.
Now, keeping in line with the same, the government has been working hard to make seamless connectivity between roads, railways, airports, and ports with an aim to lower the country’s logistics cost, increase local manufacturing competitiveness and drive the nation’s economy towards betterment.
Last month, a government official informed that soon a national masterplan for providing multimodal connectivity across various industrial hubs to cut down logistics cost and improve the competitiveness of local manufacturing will be released by the Centre.
The government’s national masterplan will help set the timeframe for building infrastructure facilities of world standards and improve logistics costs and time.
As per reports, under this masterplan, all infrastructure ministries such as those handling shipping, railways and civil aviation will be given a timeline to ensure multimodal connectivity of global quality to various production centres in the country by 2024.
The national masterplan for multimodal connectivity which is soon to be placed before the cabinet will help meet the priority of the NDA led government of reducing the logistics cost of the nation which at present stands at 12-14%.
The centre government has taken several steps to help bring the logistics cost down. The department of logistics, which has been created within the ministry of commerce and industry, will come up with a policy that will help reduce logistics cost and time.
On the same lines, the government’s step to remove the state border controls after GST was introduced in 2017 also helped save time.
As of now, the officials have identified activities of the government that adds to the compliance burden, which are expected to be addressed soon. In another attempt to make the logistics seamless and efficient in the nation, the government is also working on setting up of a single-window system for faster approvals and clearances both at the centre and state level, which is expected to be put in place by March-end.
The government has been continuously working to develop a deeper partnership between industry players and government agencies with a goal to create an ecosystem required for the country’s economic needs.
