Ministry of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways Hosts Successful Workshop on Financing and Insurance Challenges in the Shipping Sector

The Ministry of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways (MoPSW) successfully convened industry experts and stakeholders for a dynamic workshop focused on “Challenges and Prospective Solutions on Financing and Insurance in the Shipping Sector.” Held today in New Delhi, the event garnered significant participation and engagement from key stakeholders in the maritime community.

The workshop, divided into two sessions, addressed critical challenges in Financing and Insurance within the shipping sector. Session -1 delved into financing challenges, while Session -2 concentrated on Insurance in the Shipping Sector. Participants engaged in insightful discussions, sharing valuable perspectives and strategies aimed at enhancing the marine ecosystem and addressing key issues in ship ownership, tonnage, and shipbuilding capacity in India.

‘The discussions were rich with insights, and the collaborative efforts of industry experts and stakeholders have paved the way for innovative solutions to navigate the challenges facing the shipping industry, said Shri TK Ramachandran, Secretary, MoPSW’.

 

The workshop is one in the series of discussions with industry and other stakeholders and addresses the various issues being faced in the Indian shipping sector. The morning session focused on providing financing solutions to promote the Indian shipping tonnage & shipbuilding industry. The afternoon session focused on developing products for Hull & Machinery and Protection & Indemnity insurances in India. The workshop was unique in terms of stakeholder representation from across the value chain and policymakers, regulators, banks, financial institutions, shipyards, ship owners, World Bank etc. The cross-sectional participation allowed the group to take a multi-dimensional view of the issues and suggest solutions.

The aim was to identify solutions to help grow the Indian shipbuilding sector and elevate the same from a current rank of 22^nd to top 5 globally by the year 2047. Also, the aim is to increase Indian tonnage as suggested in MIV 2030 and MAKV 2047.

As part of Maritime India Vision 2030, India has set key targets to promote domestic shipbuilding, repair, and recycling. To achieve this, the country aims to harness domestic demand for shipbuilding and repair by effectively utilizing Atmanirbhar PPP provisions and RoFR rules. 

In terms of financing, stakeholders brought out points related to need for long tenure funds, granting infrastructure status to shipping, making appropriate policy & regulatory changes to enable banks to enhance lending to ships, and enhancing capacity of Indian banks and financial institutions to appraise and provide loans to Indian ships. The benefits of the IFSC rules  were explored along with the need to obtain long term cargo contracts and visibility to enhance domestic tonnage and domestic shipbuilding.

The stakeholders discussed the need to bring in an Indian P&I club to address some critical needs of the Indian Shipping sector. The insurance companies and relevant stakeholders were suggested to collaborate to provide a 1^st layer of insurance to the shippers and shipbuilders, and subsequently the re-insurance can be handled by larger global players in the 2^nd layer. Moreover, the P&I club insurance is currently led by larger global institutions with deep technical expertise, large fleet size, capital and history of managing P&I Clubs. An Indian P&I club would aspire to become one such in a phased manner by acquiring and developing competence across different shipping segments and cargos. The overall aim would be to provide competitive P&I Cover for Indian ships and cargos. The discussions held were quite insightful and set a way forward for the future of Indian Shipping sector.

This workshop is planned to be followed with a subsequent workshop on promoting shipbuilding and ship repair business in India.

MJPS