Ministry gets ready to rewrite NMDP plans

Shipping ministry is understood to revisit the National Maritime Development Programme (NMDP) and rewrite it with a new perspective plan for major ports. According to reliable sources in the port establishment, a committee is going to be formed to rewrite the programme and come up with a new plan for ports. According to them, the new plan will have a deadline of 2020. It would not only replace the NMDP but also will have new targets and new projects while giving full liberty to port chairmen.

"Though a few initial meetings on the subject were held so far, nothing has been concretised as yet," said a source. Changing course is nothing new to the prestigious programme of the government for the maritime sector. When it was conceived for the first time under BJP government and was launched by the former prime minister AB Vajpayee, on August 14, 2003, it was known as Sagarmala project. However, with change in government in Delhi, the Sagarmala project was later renamed National Maritime Development Programme (NMDP) in August 2004.

Irrespective of the name, the programme involved, among other things, projects for rapid expansion of port capacities and modernisation of ports along the east and west coasts as well as development of inland navigation.

Some quarters believe that the new establishment at the shipping ministry is revamping the programme as it is not quite satisfied with the progress that NMDP has made so far.

As on March 31, 2010 only 50 projects out of 276 projects envisaged under NMDP, stand completed. While work is reportedly progressing with 74 projects, 16 projects are stated as approved and 29 firmed up and under process of approval. A majority of 82 projects are under preliminary/planning stage even as 25 projects stand cancelled. As against a capacity addition of 430.74 million tonnes at the end of the programme in 2012, the actual addition as on March 31, 2010 is a mere 55.88 million tonnes.

"I do not really think that it is lack of progress of the NMDP that has led to the revisit or rewriting of the programme," said an official of the ministry, on condition of anonymity. "As such NMDP is approaching its 2011-12 milestone, we need to plan ahead and there is the need for a plan document. "I have the feeling that the same NMDP would be carried forward. Setting up a committee is a regular practice and there is nothing new in that.

"Ports are going by their perspective plans which are in place and have a deadline of 2020-25. The projects are already identified and even though there would be few additions and deletions, very few would change and the same programmes are going to get carried forward.”

Talking about the progresses of NMDP, the official said that it was initially slow but has picked up pace of late. "It is not that all the projects would be complete by 2011-12, and some of them would get started only by then. With 50 projects completed, another 74 ongoing projects bound to get completed by 2011-12 and the others getting initiated within the timeframe the programme as a whole would have covered quite a lot of ground. It is only fair that such ongoing projects are carried forward even when new programmes come up in due course," the ministry personal said.