Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI), under the Ministry of Shipping, will have intellectual property rights (IPR) for 14 new classes of vessels and doesn’t plan to charge royalty if any ship makers want to replicate them anywhere around the globe.
“DST Germany is designing 14 categories of vessels for us. They have already submitted their designs, which include car carriers which can carry up to 350 cars. There will be standardised designs, our experts of naval architects including professors from IIT have almost finalised the designs,” said Pravir Pandey, vice chairman of IWAI.
These new class of vessels will run on duel fuel – liquefied natural gas (LNG) and high-speed diesel (HSD) – and will range from car carriers, bulk carriers, roll-on/roll-off, liquid cargo containers, dumb barge flotilla, among others.
Model testing of these designs will be carried out in September and depending on the outcome of the tests, a bid will be floated in October this year for procurement of two vessels – car carrier and bulk carrier at an average price of Rs 15 crore.
By December 2018, a total of 20 such vessels that will operate on LNG and HSD will be bought by IWAI and leased out to private players.
The balance vessels that will be required for operations will have to be independently procured by the concerned company having concession agreement for operation and maintenance of each of the National Waters (NWs).
“For the first time an IPR of such sort is being created with an investment of the government and it will be shared free of cost with the (shipping) industry. We will put up the designs on the website for anybody to use. We will not be charging anybody world over for using these designs because this is funded by the World Bank, we cannot restrict it to only India,” added Pandey.
Meanwhile, 20 of the 111 NWs have been found unviable by IWAI either due to lack of cargo or water scarcity or a combination of both and have been shelved from the plans. Nagaland, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh are among the states where these 20 NWs have dropped.
Detailed project reports on 24 NWs are ready. There are also plans to float a bid in November to make waterways operational on seven of the NWs. Financial component for these seven has been approved by the government. These seven include Mandovi (NW-68) and Zuari (NW-111) rivers as well as Cumberjua Canal (NW-27) in Goa, Bihar’s Gandak river (NW-37), Rupnarayan river (NW-86) and Sunderbans (NW-97) in West Bengal and Barak river (NW-16) in Assam.
IWAI is also exploring at two projects in Maharashtra’s Amba river and Ulhas Creek for which an agreement with the Maharashtra Maritime Board for the development of the same has been inked.
SAILING FAST
- The new class of vessels will run on liquefied natural gas and high-speed diesel
- The vessels will range from car carriers, bulk carriers, among others
- By December 2018, a total of 20 such vessels will be bought by IWAI
