India Plans 100 New Ships to Cut $75 Billion Foreign Freight Bill

South Asia Freight News

What Happened?

The National Shipping Board (NSB) held it’s first “Sagar Samvad” in Delhi, a day long session pressing for five-point roadmap to add 100 vessels to India’s foreign-dependent merchant fleet over the next five years. Sarbananda Sonowal, the Union Ministers of Ports, Shipping & Waterways chaired the inaugural event, themed “Charting the Roadmap Towards Maritime India Vision 2030 and Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047” along with the launch of the board’s official website. NSB Chairperson Sameer Kumar Khare submitted the board's 2025-26 annual report and subcommittee policy recommendations, outlining its work since reconstitution in May 2025.

Why It Happened

Panellists laid out the structural cost gap that is driving India's reliance on foreign tonnage, flying the Indian flag runs 16–20% costlier than operating under a foreign one, attributed to India's tax on ship imports and maintenance services, tax deducted at seafarers' wages, tax on freight, and higher domestic capital costs expenses foreign competitors don't carry. Yet under the sector's Right of First Refusal mechanism, Indian owners are still expected to match foreign freight rates to win cargo. The NSB's proposed five-pillar roadmap fiscal reform, assured cargo support, competitive financing access, regulatory streamlining and ease of doing business is aimed directly at closing that gap.

What It Means

If adopted, the roadmap could help India add 100 ships to its fleet within five years, a step toward the Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047 target of ranking among the world's top five ship-owning nations. Sonowal linked the effort to India's broader capacity build-out, noting the country is quadrupling port capacity to 10,000 million tonnes a year by 2047, and framed NSB's task as ensuring Indian shipowners "stand inside that growth" rather than cede it to foreign lines. He also pointed to early tangible progress under the Rs 10,000 crore Container Manufacturing Assistance Scheme, with Maersk now ordering containers built on Indian soil. Separately, a session chaired by Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya framed India's maritime sector as a potential major employment engine, positioning the country as a leading supplier of skilled seafarers globally, alongside calls to expand training capacity and address gender disparity in the workforce.

Short-Term Outlook

This was a consultative dialogue, the five-point roadmap is a recommendation for the government to act on, not a funded program with a start date. Watch for whether the fiscal reform and assured-cargo-support pillars translate into concrete budget or tax measures in the coming months, since the tax-driven cost gap is the panel's central identified barrier. The Container Manufacturing Assistance Scheme's early traction with Maersk is a signal worth tracking as a template for how India might structure incentives for shipowners more broadly.