Gadkari outlines govt agenda for enhancing transport infrastructure

12 December 2016

Admitting that while road and rail modes of transport were getting saturated pushing up logistic costs of transporting goods and services, Gadkari told in of the conference that newer methods of transportation were being explored by his ministry even as the infrastructure for roads was being increased with newer national highways.

Gadkari said India’s export competitiveness was at stake as logistics costs were high. It was 18% in india as compared to 8% of China and 10% of some of the European nations. Unless we bring down these costs we cannot compete in the global markets, he said pointing out that coal had to be moved from far off pit heads to generating stations elsewhere pushing up costs of electricity generation.

Hosiery goods manufactured in Coimbatore had to be moved to ports in Mumbai for exports to foreign countries which added substantial costs to the manufacturers denting his pricing capability with international players, he said. Sometimes its cheaper to move a product from Mumbai to London than from Mumbai to Delhi.

Gadkari said his ministry was taking an integrated approach towards transport infrastructure while adding newer modes such as in land waterways and sea ports. We could connect some 111 rivers in the country to provide an inland waterway system for moving people and goods at cheaper costs.

Sea Planes can be introduced as a means to cut down on travel time as they required only 300 metres for landing as compared to conventional air transport that required longer ruanways, he said there was an urgent need to adopt technology in this sector. Electric buses and cars running on ethanol are the need of the hour he said pointing out the London city buses were entirely a fleet running on batteries. But these buses are expensive at Rs 1.50 crore per bus against the average cost of indian buses at rs 25 lakhs. Also battery back up was expensive at Rs 55 lakhs which Indian engineers have proved can bring down to Rs 6 lakhs, he claimed.

Waste waters can be put to good use by recycling them , he said pointing out how this was being recycled in Nagpur to fuel 50% of the transport fleet in the city now with the state government earning a rs 18 crore royalty out of supplying waste waters of the city to suppliers.

The oil and gas industry could help by pushing ahead with projects on converting coal to methanol and through coal bed methane (CBM) projects. India is now a surplus nation in power and coal. Lets use this source, he said.

On the road infrastructure , Gadkari said, out of the road network of 52 lakh kms in the country only 98,000 kms were constituted by national highways. We propose to increase this to 200,000 kms in the coming years, he said adding the entire thrust has now to be on cost effectiveness and import substitution to become competitive in global markets.

Source – IA