Most of the country's logistics resources are in urgent need of refurbishment. Setting up of a nodal cross-ministerial logistics body, providing infrastructure status to the wider transportation and logistics industry and dedicating higher financial outlay for logistics skill improvement is, therefore, advisable. TCI is in favour of a separate regulatory authority for better coordination between ministries for an integrated policy on the sector.
GST should be implemented with immediate effect to enable the creation of the common market to permit free and unimpeded movement of goods and services across the country. Steps should also be taken to bring service tax on domestic sea transport and domestic air cargo movement at par with road and rail to make the sector more competitive.
In addition, the government should ensure implementation of large projects under PPP route apart from allocating long-term amount towards infrastructure development through dediÂcated debt funds to ensure sustained development of the sector.
Multi-modal transportation is the way to reduce logistics cost. Budget should announce measures to create level playing field for private rail operators. Provisions for greater FDI in
key logistics infrastructure development areas like dredging,port connectivity, etc, should also be made apart from supporting adoption of IT to modernise the sector. Supply chain investments also need to be incentivised by exempting capital imports on supply chain equipments from taxes. Financial support should be provided for warehousing,
back-end processing and construction of cold chains to boost the sector further. Another important issue that needs attention is reduction in stoppage time to ensure faster movement of goods.
We expect budget to build on the pace of reforms to set tone for next phase of growth in the Indian economy by taking some bold policy decisions and ensuring implementation of large projects.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.