India plans 100 new ships to cut $75 billion foreign freight bill: Sarbananda Sonowal at ‘Sagar Samvad’ of National Shipping Board

The National Shipping Board (NSB) held its first ‘Sagar Samvad’ in Delhi, using the day-long dialogue to press for a five-point roadmap including adding 100 vessels to India’s foreign-dependent merchant fleet over the next five years, as expressed by Union Minister of Ports, Shipping & Waterways Sarbananda Sonowal during his speech.

The event, themed “Charting the Roadmap Towards Maritime India Vision 2030 and Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047,” was held at the Civil Services Officers Institute on Vinay Marg and drew senior officials, shipowners, financiers and young cadets from India’s maritime training institutes. Sagar Samvad, which means “ocean dialogue,” carries the board’s motto as its theme line: “Wisdom in the Ocean, Progress in the Nation.”

The inaugural edition was chaired by Sonowal, who launched the board’s first official website. NSB Chairperson Sameer Kumar Khare used the session to submit the board’s annual report for 2025-26 and subcommittee reports containing policy advice, outlining the board’s work since its reconstitution in May 2025.

Sonowal said the National Shipping Board is older than the ministry it advises, a statutory body constituted in 1958 with one job: ensuring India’s shipping policy is written only after listening to the people who sail it, own it and pay for it. He said under the re-enacted Merchant Shipping Act, 2025, and the new National Shipping Board Rules, the mandate has been renewed and strengthened, making a platform like Sagar Samvad essential to building intellectual consensus toward an Atmanirbhar Shipping Bharat by 2047.

Vijay Kumar, Secretary of the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, was also in attendance. Sonowal held a special interaction with trainee officers from maritime training institutes and acknowledged the success of the Rs 10,000 crore Container Manufacturing Assistance Scheme, with global shipping major Maersk now ordering containers built on Indian soil.

Sonowal welcomed the NSB’s five-point roadmap covering fiscal reform, assured cargo support, access to competitive financing, regulatory streamlining and ease of doing business, calling them the architecture of a nation choosing to own its own trade. He said India is quadrupling port capacity to 10,000 million tonnes a year by 2047, and that NSB’s task is to ensure Indian shipowners stand inside that growth.

A session on “Maritime Labour Force: Opportunities and Challenges” was chaired by Union Minister of Labour & Employment and Youth Affairs & Sports Mansukh Mandaviya, who said India’s maritime sector has the potential to become a major engine of employment for the country’s young workforce and position India as the world’s leading supplier of skilled seafarers. He called for coordinated efforts among government, industry, trade bodies and training institutions to expand training capacity, address gender disparity and build specialised talent for emerging segments such as cruise shipping.

Union Minister of State for Ports, Shipping and Waterways Shantanu Thakur presided over a panel on “Augmentation of Indian Tonnage: Opportunities and Challenges.” He said India pays close to $75 billion every year in freight to foreign shipping lines to move critical cargo including crude oil, gas, coal and urea, calling it a competitiveness and demand-partnership problem rather than a performance issue for Indian shipowners, and said India must command its own waterline to become a Viksit Bharat by 2047.

The session featured addresses by Capt. M.P. Basin and C.V. Subbarao, with a valedictory panel including Atul Jadhav, Vice-President of the Indian Maritime Foundation; Anil Devli, CEO of the Indian National Shipowners’ Association and an NSB member; Capt. S.I.A.K. Azad, Nautical Adviser at the DGMA; Ashutosh Sharma, Chief General Manager at the International Financial Services Centres Authority; Rahul Modi, President of the Container Shipping Lines Association and an NSB member; and Capt. Pankaj Kumar, Managing Director of Diamond Blue Shipping Solutions.

Panellists said flying the Indian flag remains 16% to 20% costlier than operating under a foreign one, a gap attributed to India’s tax on ship imports and maintenance services, tax deducted at seafarers’ wages, tax on freight and higher domestic capital costs, expenses foreign competitors do not carry. Yet under the sector’s Right of First Refusal mechanism, Indian owners are still expected to match foreign freight rates to win cargo, the panel said. The proposed five-pillar roadmap, if adopted, could help India add 100 ships to its fleet within five years, a step toward the Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047 target of ranking among the world’s top five ship-owning nations.

In his welcome speech, NSB Chairperson Sameer Kumar Khare said the entire effort draws inspiration from the Prime Minister’s vision of placing the Blue Economy at the centre of Viksit Bharat under the Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047, adding that under the leadership of Sonowal, that vision has translated into high-impact infrastructure, port modernisation and green shipping reforms on the ground.

The National Shipping Board is a statutory advisory body under the Merchant Shipping Act, 2025, that counsels the government on shipping policy, tonnage, seafarer welfare and port-linked maritime development.