To help ease transportation and logistics costs, the government is planning to introduce a warehousing policy, which will lay the roadmap for developing exclusive warehousing zones through public-private partnerships.
The zones, with proper storage facilities, will be set up on the outskirts of major cities to avoid traffic congestion within city limits. The policy will be framed by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) that will also be the implementing agency. NHAI member Manoj Kumar said the policy is at the final stages and will be out in public domain before the year-end. Queries to the road transport and highways ministry on the policy remained unanswered till press time.
The zones will use land bank along highways and expressways available with the NHAI. Under the public-private partnership (PPP) model land will be offered to private developers for constructing warehousing zones on a revenue-sharing basis or for a fixed fee. The terms of agreements will be finalized later.
The warehousing zones will benefit fast-moving consumer goods companies and steel and cement makers to stock inventory near major hubs.
Although the locations are yet to be finalized, the industry is abuzz with speculations that the first such facility may come up near road transport mister Nitin Gadkari’s hometown Nagpur. However, this could not be independently verified.
The warehousing zones and multi-modal logistics parks, which are also being set up by the NHAI, will help reduce overall logistics costs that remains at a high level of 14-16% of gross domestic product (GDP) compared 8-10% of GDP in China and 12-13% in the US.
Once the zones are operational, the carrying capacity of trucks could also be increased as large goods vehicles will no longer be needed to ply on city roads, which in turn will help ease major traffic congestions.
The proposed warehousing zones are part of the government’s initiatives to reform the transport sector that accounts for a majority of goods movement across India.
Source : Live Mint
