Maritime Newsletter

Plea for level-playing field for national flag carriers - 2010-07-05

Mr S. Hajara, CMD of Shipping Corporation of India and President of the Indian National Shipowners Association, on Friday pleaded for a level-playing field for national flag carriers vis-à-vis the foreign flag. An estimated 95 per cent of the world shipping was subjected to a tax regime varying from zero to 0.5 per cent against 8.5 to 9 per cent for Indian shipping. While no foreign airlines could land at any Indian airport without the landing rights granted to them by the civil aviation authorities, there was no such stipulation for foreign ships calling at any Indian port. Sixty per cent of the earnings of Indian shipping would get ploughed back to the national economy against 10 per cent of the foreign shipping lines. No wonder, the share of national carriers in the country's sea-borne trade dropped to 8.85 per cent from 13 per cent a couple of years ago. Emphasising the need for correction of the skewed distribution of containerised cargo between the country's east and west coasts, Mr Hajara said the look-east policy being pursued since 1992 should ensure that the practice of importing east-bound containers through west coats ports and carting them all the way to the east was abandoned. This, of course, presupposed development of infrastructure on the east.Source: Business Line