With the government’s decisiveness to roll out the much-awaited Goods and Service Tax (GST), we hope that the implementation will eradicate the hurdles by simplifying tax structure. This move will open ‘India’ as one single market and bring down state level barriers. In the long-term, GST will stimulate the emergence of true “hub-and-spoke” system, with companies setting large hubs in key strategic gateway locations coupled with smaller spoke warehouses nearer to metro/ urban consumption centers.
In India, companies still utilize road transportation for majority of the goods movement. The government must accelerate laying and upgradation of freight corridors and highways that will result in faster transportation, lower fuel consumption and wastage. We also hope that the government recognizes that logistics is the backbone of our economy and sets up a regulatory / governing body.
We hope that over a period of time the shipping ministry will promote coastal shipping in India by doing away with custom duty for ships which are built and operated in a foreign country, however under the Indian Flag. We also wish that the government of India finally accepts the long pending demand of the industry to abolish the custom duty on coastal ships thereby making it economical for the ships to operate in the Indian coast. As per several representation made, coastal shipping is the most efficient way to transport good, it not only helps to decongest the Indian roads and burn less fuel, it also is cost effective thus helping Indian manufactures become more competitive in their products, helping the consumers and also helping the in managing the inflation.
All the infra projects need to have the environment clearance before sending it for bidding, so that there is complete transparency and visibility for the participating company.
Last but not the least, we recommend the abolition of TAMP at the earliest. The JNPT terminal which is the most important port handling well over 60% country’s container trade has become extremely congested. It is showing India in poor light due to frequent break down in port operations due to many reasons, a primary one being the TAMP regime. This has demotivated the private terminals to perform to their capacity which has caused tremendous strain on the efficiency of the port making the Indian export far more expensive and delay leading the cancellation of several orders in this extremely difficult situation.
There are plenty of suggestions that have been made in the past to initiate the transaction cost, without the authorities intervening on the day to day transactions of the Logistics companies. We definitely wish that the government pays to attention to all the suggestions made to bring about the reforms.