Announcement Of The National Logistics Policy-A Firm Step Towards "Atmanirbhar Bharat"
Logistics in India is an unorganized sector and there was a need to collate towards progress, achieving the government’s endeavors of striving towards single digit logistics cost aligning with developed countries to compete and promote our products in the international market
We welcome the much-desired National Logistics Policy (NLP) which was unveiled by the Hon’ble Prime Minister on September 17, 2022 at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi with an aim towards Reducing logistics cost to single digit to make India one of the viable manufacturing hubs in the world.
Other key objectives of the NLP are as follow:
To create common platform for better understanding of Government with stakeholders to assess and take steps towards developments.
Integrating the modes of transport, Multimodal with Transmodal to make it seamless and effective.
In achieving “Atmanirbhar Bharat”and “Make in India” dreams come true.
The First and Last mile delivery to be effective on real time monitoring basis to reduce dwell time and logistics cost.
Delivering product on time at right market towards alternate market of Perishable and Agro products to avoid wastage.
To integrate Ministries and PGAs on common portal.
To reduce multiple exchange of physical documents by creating a common Documents for seamless movements of good with maximum use of IT platform through RFID/ QR/ Barcodes etc.
The NLP highlighted that present logistics cost is the result of multiple factors including policy framework and constraints of required infrastructure, both physical and IT, and aptly addressed those bottlenecks to facilitate the country’s manufacturing and domestic distribution for international trade supported by domestic connectivity.
The emphasis has been on a holistic approach and it would give impetus to the speed that the country wants.
We at FFFAI are proud to be part of this initiative and contributing towards achieving Government goals.
The NLP has been supported by various other projects to make it effective to accelerate logistics operations and cargo clearance, which include Sagarmala, Bharatmala, new Waterways, Dedicated Freight Corridors, Multimodal Logistics Parks, Krishi Udan, Drones for transportation of goods, DPD, AEO, e-Sanchit, Faceless Assessment, Turant Customs, SWIFT, GST, PM GatiShakti National Master Plan, LEADS Report, the Unified Logistics Interface Platform,
The facilitation on e-LOGS would be more beneficial to interact on IT platform on real time basis for immediate response and redressal forum, etc.
We are hopeful four major features of the NLP i.e Integration of Digital System (IDS); Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP); Ease of Logistics (ELOG) and System Improvement Group (SIG) would yield desired results in the days to come for the larger interest of the end-to-end logistics industry.
FFFAI also appreciates that the NLP aspires not only to reduce cost of logistics in India to be comparable to global benchmarks by 2030, it also endeavours to be among top 25 countries by 2030 in the Logistics Performance Index ranking, and creates data driven decision support mechanism for an efficient logistics ecosystem.
Commendably, NLP has a human face as well, which emphasised on the benefits of common people (as the logistics industry serves the nation even during the crisis period like pandemic or natural calamity, etc) and ground level workers like truck drivers, loaders/labours, etc. Key objective of these initiatives were to expedite cargo clearance, Ease of Doing Business and improvement of Logistics Performance Index of the country to adopt best practices to compete world standards with first and last mile connectivity.
We look forward for proper implementation and active role of all Ministries/departments/industry stakeholders to achieve the goal of the innovative initiatives/announcements of the National Logistics Policy. FFFAI is committed to continue its efforts of strengthening the logistics operations for the greater interest of the international trade and the country’s economy, as proclaimed in the NLP.
The best part of NLP is the monitoring of performance with progress. It’s only with the monitoring system we will be able to achieve our result and we are confident that the government is serious towards developing and supporting Logistics industry in achieving their vision.
NLP comes with lot of opportunities in Logistics sector to make it organised and to attract the generation next/young entrepreneurs’ participation as choice of industry, to be proud of being in Logistics Industry which is the backbone of economy.
By Mr. Shankar Shinde, Chairman, FFFAI