Government-owned Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) plans to collaborate with Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) soon to begin inland waterways and coastal shipping services.
The services that will start on National Waterway-1 will be undertaken by the wholly owned subsidiary of SCI — Calcutta-registered Inland & Coastal Shipping Ltd.
“We are getting into a collaboration with IWAI and we are going to start our services through our 100 per cent subsidiary Inland & Coastal Shipping. We are going to start regular service on NW1,” SCI chairman and managing director H. K. Joshi said at a virtual event organised by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
She said that while cargo movement through waterways is economically cheaper, there remains a few hurdles. “Multimodal transportation today is not really working out to be the cheapest and the most convenient because end-to-end linkage is still not properly established,” she said. Navigation and silting are the other challenges.
