By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR: Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways Shri Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister of Ports, Shipping & Waterways and Ayush, Shri Sarbananda Sonowal, and Union Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways, Gen (Retd) VK Singh witnessed signing of tripartite agreement for swift development of modern Multi Modal Logistics Parks (MMLP) under Bharatmala Pariyojna across the country with an objective to centralize freight consolidation and reduce logistics cost from 14% to less than 10% of GDP at par with International Standards. The tripartite agreement was signed by National Highways Logistics Management Limited (NHLML), Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) and Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL).
Speaking on the occasion Shri Nitin Gadkari said he was elated to witness the signing of MoU as it will provide seamless modal shift, MMLPs will ensure that cargo is swapped/shifted from and to Waterways, Dedicated Freight Corridors & Road Transport. He said this is building the Nation through Gati Shakti.
Shri Sarbananda Sonowal, said today is a historic occasion when we propose to put the letter & spirit of Bharatmala Pariyojana into effect for a swift, efficient, economical and environment friendly logistics movement across the country. He said the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to empower and energise the economies of scale via PM Gati Shakti. This agreement is an earnest attempt towards realisation of this objective. The Minister said we believe that the country will be immensely benefit with the coming up of such efficient stations. MMLPs are designed to untie the cobweb of logistics movement and enliven the logistics sector to put the economy into the fast lane of growth, he added.
MMLP will be a freight handling facility with rail and road accessibility, comprising of container terminals, cargo terminals (bulk, break-bulk), warehouses, cold storage, facilities for mechanised material handling and value-added services such as customs clearance with bonded storage yards, quarantine zones, testing facilities and warehousing management services etc. along with other associated facilities. Developed under a ‘Hub & Spoke’ model, the MMLP will integrate multiple modes of freight transport through highways, railways & inland waterways. The agreement underlines the cooperation & collaboration model between the three bodies in order to achieve efficiency in logistics movement within the country.
The MMLP project is poised to develop state-of-the-art large scale warehousing facility for different types of commodities, to become one stop solution for all services related to cargo movement like warehousing, custom clearance, parking, maintenance of trucks etc. The MMLPs will focus on a technology driven implementation for a state-of-the-art freight management system. Many value added services like packaging, repackaging and labelling will be available in these projects.
The NHLML is a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) of National Highway Authority (NHAI) of Ministry of Road Transport & Highways while IWAI is a statutory authority under Ministry of Ports, Shipping & Waterways. The RVNL is a wholly owned Public Sector Enterprise under Ministry of Railways. The signatories of the agreement were Prakash Gaur, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), NHLML; Ravi Kant, Chief Engineer & Project Manager for IWAI and Vikas Awasthi, Executive Director (Planning), RVNL.
