Coastal shipping: scope of integrating with the national transport network

Abstract

Coastal shipping constitutes about 30% of the total traffic handled at our ports. Exhibit 1 gives data for the past two years for the major ports, the Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB) ports, and the non-GMB minor and intermediate ports. We see that the total coastal traffic for 1998-99 was 87.4 million tonnes (mt.). Out of this, 75.8 mt (86.7%) was handled in the major ports, 6.4 mt (7.3%) was handled in the GMB ports and the rest 5.2 mt (5.9%) in the non-GMB minor and intermediate ports.