As part of its initiative to reduce country’s logistics cost by making systems more efficient and broad based, government proposes to rope in private sector into its Unified Logistic Interface Platform- ULIP.
About 24 Digital Systems of 6 Ministries are being integrated through ULIP. With the involvement of the private sector entities under it, government is looking to create a National Single Window Logistics Portal which will help in reducing the logistics cost.
Speaking at a post-budget webinar on PM Gati Shakti on Monday, Sanjeev Ranjan, Secretary, Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways(MoPSW) said that ULIP shall standardize the processes and speed up the procedures related to the overall trade.
He said that the Government is also looking to operationalise National Logistics Portal (NLP Marine) which will make entire logistic ecosystem more efficient, benefit EXIM trade and create more opportunities for specialized jobs’.
The secretary said that NLP in integration with ULIP shall standardize the procedures and speed up the procedures related to the overall trade.
The webinar was earlier addressed by Prime Minister Who also emphasised that PM Gati Shakti has a huge role to play in improving logistics infrastructure thereby reducing the logistic cost.
PM Gati Shakti aims to achieve the target of a $5 trillion economy, enhance infrastructure capacities, efficient logistics through seamless multimodal transport, creating synergy among various departments.
Ranjan said the Port Community System (PCS) was initiated in 2006 to make ports ecosystem more efficient and implement Ease of Doing Business.
“After implementing the PCS more than 16000+ corporate have become its users and have benefitted by it. Now, the process of upgrading the PCS to National Logistics Portal (NLP Marine) is underway which will make entire logistic ecosystem more efficient,” he said.
He further stated, ‘Sagarmala Program of MoPSW aims to improve logistics efficiency through implementation of projects of port modernization and port connectivity enhancement. While Direct Port Delivery (DPD) has increased from 39.15% in FY2018 to 62.48% in FY2021, there is 64.66 % Increase in container traffic at Indian ports in 2020-21 as compared to 2014-15 with further expectation of its increasing by about 2.5 times by 2030’ thereby requiring more integrated approach to cater such challenge.
While discussing about the architecture of ULIP which is having three layers of Integration, Governance and Presentation, he highlighted its benefits to the stakeholders and asked for more synergy among the existing integrated stakeholders and invite the others to extract maximum benefits from this integration.
Secretary MoPSW also discussed and chart out the way forward for the ULIP and highlighted that ‘ULIP aims at paperless/only electronic data transfer regime leading to reduction in compliances, creating the environment for boosting the confidence of the users and stakeholders for using the NLP/ ULIP by ensuring data authenticity, standardization of procedures and harmonization of processes for seamless trade thereby enhancing ease of doing business for all. ULIP will provide real time monitoring of cargo movement while ensuring data confidentiality with end-to-end encryption, comprehensive reduction in logistic cost resulting in competitive costing. All the above can be achieved through IT intervention like ULIP, which will further create new jobs and job roles’.
The post-budget webinar was moderated by Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog. During this webinar, other dignitaries also shared views on the Progress of ULIP So far and Way Forward, ULIP as a Gateway etc.
Source : Live Mint
