The Centre on Tuesday announced plans to add 100 new ships to India's commercial fleet of 1,600 ships over the next five years, in a bid to offset $75 billion in freight charges for foreign-flagged vessels.
The move was announced by Union Minister of Ports, Shipping & Waterways (MoPSW), Sarbananda Sonowal, at the first ‘Sagar Samvad (ocean dialogue)' conducted by the National Shipping Board (NSB) in Delhi.
The event, themed 'Charting the Roadmap Towards Maritime India Vision 2030 and Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047', saw a number of senior officials, shipowners, financiers and young cadets from India's maritime training institutes in attendance.
The NSB is a permanent statutory body established in 1959 under Section 4 of Merchant Shipping Act, 1958, responsible for advising the MoPSW on shipping policy, tonnage, seafarer welfare and port-linked maritime development.
Panelists noted that flying the Indian flag remains 16-20 per cent costlier than operating under a foreign one—a gap they attributed to a number of issues that have led to the NSB proposing five key reforms across ministries to help boost Indian commercial shipping.
Yet, they pointed out that under the Right of First Refusal (RoFR) mechanism used by the maritime sector to award contracts, Indian owners are still expected to match foreign freight rates to win cargo.
In that regard, the NSB's five-pillar reform roadmap includes fiscal reform, assured cargo support, access to competitive financing, regulatory streamlining, and improved ease of doing business (EoDB).
It said that these measures, if implemented properly, could help India add 100 ships to its fleet within five years, in line with its larger goals under Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047.
India's demand aggregation plan
This plan to add 100 commercial ships to India's fleet is part of a larger MoPSW plan to aggregate shipbuilding demand in the country to boost the indigenous fleet and also combat geopolitical issues.
The Centre's aggregate demand scheme plans to add about 430 ships of all kinds to India's fleet over the next decade, by means of a unified push, at the helm of which is the Bharat Container Shipping Line (BCSL) consortium, which includes various maritime stakeholders.
The members of the consortium include the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Shipping Corporation of India (SCI), Container Corporation of India (CONCOR), Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority (JNPA), V.O. Chidambaranar Port Authority (VOCPA), Chennai Port Authority, and the Sagarmala Finance Corporation Limited (SMFCL).
The aggregate push is also a key part of the Centre's comprehensive package of Rs 69,725 crore for the allround development of India's maritime sector.
In fact, under the ₹24,736 crore Shipbuilding Financial Assistance Scheme (SBFAS) within the 2025 maritime package, shipbuilders are awarded about 15-25 per cent financial assistance from the Centre per vessel.
"I welcome the National Shipping Board's five-point roadmap," Sonowal said.
"Taken together, these are not five separate tasks; they are the architecture of a nation choosing, at last, to own its own trade. Under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we are quadrupling our port capacity to 10,000 million tonnes a year by 2047. NSB's task is to ensure Indian shipowners stand inside that growth, not watching it sail past on someone else's deck," he added.
