India's National Shipping Board Proposes 100-Ship Expansion to Reduce $75 Billion Foreign Freight Dependency
The National Shipping Board (NSB) held its inaugural 'Sagar Samvad' (Ocean Dialogue) event in New Delhi on August 25, 2026, focusing on charting the roadmap towards Maritime India Vision 2030 and Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047. The event was chaired by Union Minister of Ports, Shipping & Waterways Sarbananda Sonowal, who launched the board's first official website and received the annual report for 2025-26 along with subcommittee reports containing policy advice for the government.
A critical revelation from the session was that India pays approximately $75 billion annually in freight charges to foreign shipping lines for transporting essential commodities including crude oil, gas, coal, and urea. Union Minister of State Shantanu Thakur emphasized that this represents a competitiveness issue rather than a performance problem for Indian shipowners.
Panel discussions identified that operating Indian-flagged ships remains 16-20% more expensive than foreign-flagged vessels due to multiple cost disadvantages. These include India's tax on ship imports and maintenance services, tax deducted at seafarers' wages, tax on freight, and higher domestic capital costs - expenses that foreign competitors do not bear. Despite these disadvantages, Indian owners are expected to match foreign freight rates to win cargo under the sector's Right of First Refusal mechanism.
The NSB panel proposed a comprehensive five-pillar roadmap to address these challenges: fiscal reform, assured cargo support, access to competitive financing, regulatory streamlining, and improved ease of doing business. The measures are designed to help India add 100 ships to its fleet within five years, moving toward the Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047 target of ranking among the world's top five ship-owning nations.
Minister Sonowal highlighted the government's commitment to quadrupling port capacity to 10,000 million tonnes per year by 2047 and acknowledged the success of the ₹10,000 crore Container Manufacturing Assistance Scheme, with global shipping major Maersk now ordering containers built on Indian soil.
The event also featured a session on "Maritime Labour Force: Opportunities and Challenges" chaired by Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, who emphasized India's potential to become the world's leading supplier of skilled seafarers. The discussion covered workforce development, addressing gender disparity, and creating specialized talent for emerging segments such as cruise shipping and advanced shipbuilding.
The National Shipping Board, constituted in 1958 and operating under the re-enacted Merchant Shipping Act, 2025, serves as a statutory advisory body counseling the government on shipping policy, tonnage, seafarer welfare, and port-linked maritime development.