Live Mint reported that India’s shipping industry chiefs recently met Mr APVN Sarma shipping secretary seeking the government’s intervention to strictly enforce rules that protect them from foreign competition in Indian waters.
Reeling under lower earnings, local fleet owners are now turning attention to India’s coastal trade where they have recently come under increasing foreign competition as global shipowners look at potential regions to stay afloat.
The local shipping industry wants protection from the government in the country’s territorial waters, arguing that countries such as Indonesia and China have framed rules allowing only firms from those nations to move coastal cargo to deal with the global recession.
The country’s coastal trade is reserved for India registered ships. Foreign ships are allowed to carry cargo along the coast only when Indian ships are not available and also need permission of the maritime regulator.
The meeting took place after the government rejected the demand of local shipowners to set up a corpus of INR 10,000 crore in soft loans for purchasing ships amid a liquidity crunch in the global financial markets. The government also turned down their request to treat ships as infrastructure.
(Sourced from http://www.steelguru.com/news/index/2009/09/14/MTExNTgw/Indian_shipping_firms_urge_government_for_protection.html)
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Indian shipping firms urge government for protection
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