The Shipping Ministry has written to the Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure (CCI) that the coastal shipping sector can be given the infrastructure status in order to promote its growth. Once the sector obtains the status, it will get many benefits that help its fast growth; it will be easy for it to get credit at cheaper rates which do matter very significantly and it will also obtain regulatory clearances much faster. Delay in clearances, no doubt, results in delay in acquisition of business, ultimately. The status will also promote the coastal trade along India’s long coastline of 5,560 kilometers with so many major and innumerable minor ports. Incidentally, it will also attract private investments in the sector. The government sources said: “Coastal shipping satisfies all the parameters listed by the Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure. The Ministry has made the proposal for infra status. We expect it to come through”.According to the CCI, the six criteria that a sector must have to qualify itself for the infra status are natural monopoly, high sunk-costs and asset specificity, non-tradability of out-put, non-rivalness in consumption, possibility of price exclusion, and presence of externalities. The other three factors that influence granting of the infra status to a sector are the importance of the sector to the economic development, its capacity to contribute to human capital and the specific circumstances wherein the sector developed in India.
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