India has five inland waterways and the Central Government is in the process of dec¡laring the Lakhipur-Bhanga stretch of river Barak in Assam as the sixth National Waterway. The Minister of Water Resources will move a Bill in Parliament for declaring this.
Union Finance Minister, P Chidambaram announced this in his Budget 2013-14. Also, the government is in the process of setting up a grid connecting waterways, roads and ports. Preparatory work is underway in this regard. The 12th Plan has an adequate outlay for capital works, including dredging, on the national waterways.
Government plans to choose barge operators, thro¡ugh competitive bidding, to tran¡sport bulk cargo on the national waterways. The first transport contract has been awarded in West Bengal from Haldia to Farakka.
Currently, the waterways of Northeast India is unexplored. Already, the move to link the South East Asian countries through Northeast India is on.
Kaladan multimodal transport project to upgrade the Sittwe Port connecting Paletwa in Myanmar’s Chin State to Mizoram underway would boost trade and commerce.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.