In an interview with The Indian Express, Nitin Gadkari, union minister for road transport, highways and shipping, said: “The Act will be simple to understand, transparent and business friendly. Under this itself, we are proposing to abolish TAMP, which will be tabled in the next Parliament session.”
Mr Gadkari added that the ministry is working on a proposal to form subsidiaries under the 12 major ports in India, which will invest in developing inland waterways across the country.
According to the plan, the ministry is expected to unveil a new policy which will enable all government run ports to form companies under their umbrella, with a focus on such development. Already, a decision has been made to form two waterways under Goa port.
The ministry’s budget, however, is not enough to carry out an ambitious inland waterways project and it has, therefore, asked all major ports to start subsidiaries which will leverage dollar-denominated billing to raise low-cost money.
With resource mobilisation being a key concern, the ministry has also written to the Finance Ministry to ask for 5% of the overall petrol-diesel levy for inland waterways, said Mr Gadkari.