Altering the way India moves, Shipping giant Maersk line to start using Ganga waterway from today

Varanasi, Feb 12: Ganga waterway is an example of India’s achievement in not just reduction of cost but also limiting the carbon footprint. Now today, the world’s largest container shipping company Maersk line will move 16 containers on river Ganga (National Highway-1) from Varanasi to Kolkata.

The firm is onboard India’s inland waterways for the first time. Maersk moves 12 million containers yearly across the globe.

 

Due to this advance, now cargo from the locality will move directly to and from Bangladesh and the rest of the world through the Bay of Bengal. The similar movements are already done by companies like PepsiCo, Emami Agrotech, IFFCO Fertilizers, Dabur India.

On November 12, 2018, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi dedicated India’s first riverine multimodal terminal on river Ganga (National Waterway-1) at Varanasi to the nation. On the same day, he also received the country’s first container cargo that traveled on river Ganga (National Waterway-1) from Kolkata to Varanasi. The twin events marked golden moments in the development of Inland Water Transport (IWT) in India and also broke grounds for a spout in business activities on National Waterway-1.

Water cargo transport has many essential advantages. It allows easier model shift, reduces pilferages and damages with a decrease of handling the cost. It also helped in the reduction of carbon footprints.

The government is developing NW-1 (River Ganga) under JMVP from Haldia to Varanasi (1390 Km) with the technical and financial assistance of the World Bank at an estimated cost of Rs 5369 crore. The project would enable commercial navigation of vessels with a capacity of 1500-2,000 DWT.

the pilot movements on National Waterways are currently being done on various stretches. More than 15 of them have already been successfully completed, including integrated movements through NW-1 (Ganga), Indo-Bangladesh Protocol Route and NW-2 (Brahmaputra).