Blue Economy - 21st February 2018

• CIDCO under the Magnetic Maharashtra Celebrations, organised a symposium on Affordable housing and Blue Economy.
• The programme was held in CIDCO Convention Centre, Vashi.
• My observations in the conference were :
• India was the leading Economy in the world few hundred years ago due to our Naval Strength.
• Was happy to be part of the opening of Rajendra Chola's Portrait in Mazdock reviving the plans for making building a more strong navy in India.
• Capitalising the blue Economy should start with setting a vision for the Economy. Now , Maharashtra Government has set a goal of $ 1 trn Economy, the Blue Economy could be 30% to 40% of the total Economy. Once the vision has been set, the detailed action plans could be drawn up.
• We have to develop four port based cities like Singapore and Hong Kong in India. One could be in Maharashtra and in New Mumbai.
• Blue Economy strategy could reduce the cost of Logistics from 14% of GDP to 9% of GDP.
•  There are instances where, Corporates in India were using water for transportation to reduce costs. Gujarat Ambuja was the first company in India to use water to sell cement in other states, which made their products competitive in many states. Similar strategies are being adopted by  other corporates in India and recent examples are transportation of vehicles to Bangladesh through water.
• India has a very good eco system for development of blue Economy . We can build ships at very low costs . The required eco system in terms of Engineering Institutions, Marine Institutions, Raw material , IT Industry, Digital initiatives , Make In India and vibrant finance industry / insurance industry,  can support the initiatives of ship building.
• In all the leading institutions in the world, Indians have shown their competence and we have developed a vibrant IT and Digital industries. Industry 4.0 initiatives will also help in developing a robust ship building industry.
• From the experience of taking training sessions for Ship building institutions , there is a need to reduce the time to build a ship and this would be possible by creating core competences using the available resources in right blend and reduction of cost would help to build many ships.
• This will reduce the cost of transportation. Now we are planning to bring gas and oil from US and Canada. The logistics costs will become attractive. Now the market share of Indian carriers in our trade is only 15% and this can go up.