Maritime cluster will create jobs

Chennai: Tamil Nadu will soon be on the global maritime map for ship-building and marine tourism if the plan to establish the maritime cluster fructifies.

The cluster proposed to be developed near Chennai, due to enabling conditions like existing shipyards, major ports, steel cluster, automotive and engineering industry, will spur economy contributing to the national GDP besides trigger large-scale employment.

In addition to the one hundred acre land parcel owned by the nearby Ennore Port identified for cluster development in Tamil Nadu, Hazira in Gujarat has been identified for the marine cluster project in India.  

These will place India as an ideal destination for marine tourism and the Union Shipping Ministry also has plans to develop aquariums, water parks, marine museums, cruise tourism and water sports. The fishing industry would provide employment and contribute to the overall maritime economy of the state. As per a report on Sagarmala project India can target to achieve a 0.2 per cent share of maritime services in overall GDP by 2025.

Given an expected GDP of six trillion US dollars in India by 2025 and a services share of fifty per cent, the maritime services industry is expected to be worth around six billion US dollars.

Even Rs 5000 crore worth ancillary market for maritime cluster can prove to be a huge opportunity to the Indian economy with engineering, fabrication and machining offering the greatest potential by 2025.

The demand for ships is expected to go up to 150 million dwt by 2025 and 300 million dwt by 2035 with the growth in global exports, as per the shipping Ministry’s assessment.

India currently accounts for hardly 0.45 per cent of the global ship building market and could target three to four million dwt of the global ship building capacity by 2025.