New Delhi: The India Integrated Transport and Logistic Summit (IITLS) 2017 that will kick off in the national capital on Thursday is expected to draw several foreign investments including from the participants from Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong.
The minister for road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday said that this is for the first time when all transport ministries like air, water, road and railways are available at the same platform and are together accessible for the investors. “We are expecting IITLS to draw big investments of around Rs2 lakh crore including from the countries like Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong.”
He said the summit is the first step to the government’s aim to have an effective multimodal logistics and transport sector to make Indian economy more competitive and the ministry for road transport has taken a lead in it.
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He said around 20 MoU between different government agencies, including National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), CONCOR, Port Trust, Land Ports Authority of India, Central Railside Warehousing Co. and different state governments, are already at a mature stage and the rest will be finalized till the end of summit.
The ministry plans to develop around 35 multimodal logistic parks in India which will cater to 50% of the freight movement, enable 10% reduction in transportation costs and 12% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Out of these, land parcels and pre-feasibility studies for six locations have already been initiated.
Gadkari said the parks will be developed jointly by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), National Highways Infrastructure Development Corp. (NHDICL) and the respective state governments. It will work like this: a joint venture will be set up between NHAI (49% share) and the partner (51%) for the project which may be a state government or a private entity. Of the land acquired for the project, 40% will be developed and returned to the land owner. While 20% of the land will be sold to finance the project, the profit from the rest 40% of the land will go to NHAI. The road transport and highways ministry has also sought an infrastructure status for these logistics parks.