The move along with other steps will help the Shipping Ministry raise money for the ambitious inland waterways plan. To raise a part of large pool of resources needed to fund the ambitious inland waterways plan, Union Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari asked all major ports to start subsidiaries which will leverage dollar-denominated billing to raise low-cost money. His Ministry has also written to the Finance Ministry to allocate 5% of the corpus coming from the cess on petrol and diesel for inland waterways, he said. Starting with the largest container port JNPT, the Ministry has asked major ports to start subsidiaries for the purpose, he said. With resource mobilisation being a key worry, the Shipping Ministry has also asked the Finance Ministry to part with 5 per cent of the overall petrol-diesel cess for inland waterways, Gadkari said.

Source: dna August 23, 2016 04:47 UTC