Why in News?

• Speaking at the International conference cum awards on civil aviation and cargo, the Minister of State(I/c) for Civil Aviation, Housing & Urban Development said that the Ministry would not tolerate any compromise on Air Safety and standards.
• The event organised by ASSOCHAM.

Highlights:

• The first National Air Cargo Policy’s (NACP) outline was released at the Global Aviation Summit in January 2019.
• It aims to achieve fundamental re-engineering of the whole-of-the-value-chains for domestic and export-import air freight for reaching the target of handling 10 million tonnes by 2026-27.

National Civil Aviation Policy:

• A comprehensive National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) was announced in 2016, covering 22 areas of the Civil Aviation sector.
• It was framed to boost regional air connectivity, establish an integrated ecosystem to promote tourism and generate employment.

National Air Cargo Policy’s (NACP):

• The National Air Cargo Policy unveiled at the Global Aviation Summit 2019, seeks to make India among the top five air freight markets by 2025, besides creating air transport shipment hubs at all major airports over the next six years.
  The policy aims at encouraging code sharing/inter-line agreements between foreign and Indian carriers.
• The policy seeks to establish agreements between national carriers/ freighters and integrators to improve domestic connectivity as well as encourage the establishment of agreements between national and international carriers/freighters and other airline operators to provide access to key global cargo hubs.
• It also aims to promote the development of a last mile/first mile connectivity program at international/regional gateways. As part of the security strategy under the policy, the strategy will address security related to the physical cargo, people handling the cargo, data and information related to shipments within and across all chains of custody transfers.
• To increase process transparency while decreasing shipment delays, costs and dwell time, a fully automated paperless trade environment with minimum face-to-face interactions will be implemented
• The policy assured that The GST and other economic legislation would be reviewed by the appropriate government agencies to ensure effective measures are in place to support the national air cargo development strategies.