A scheme to promote flagging of merchant ships in India is proposed to be launched. This will provide subsidy support to Indian shipping companies in global tenders floated by various Ministries and Central Public Sector Enterprises. An amount of Rs. 1,624 crore will be provided for a period of five years under the proposed scheme.
This decision by the government is expected to ease container shortage in the country. The shortage is experienced due to uneven import-export scenario which has resulted in high costs for both the shipping lines and the exporters.
According to exporters, ocean freight has doubled because of shortage of containers. It has now started to affect exports of our major agricultural commodities such as cotton, and rice.
The decline in container availability has been further attributed due to the decrease in Chinese imports.
