Why in News?

•          Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) made public 13 standardised state-of-the-art ship designs suitable for large barge haulage on river Ganga (National Waterway-1). This marks attaining a critical milestone in the growth of the country’s Inland Water Transport (IWT) sector.

Boosting Domestic Shipbuilding and Navigation:

•          Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) made public 13 standardized state-of-the-art ship designs suitable for large barge haulage on river Ganga.
•          It will help overcome the unique navigation challenges river Ganga throws due to its complex river morphology, hydraulics, acute bends, shifting channels, meanders and current.
•          It will serve as an enabler for domestic shipbuilding industry working on inland vessels and open huge possibilities for cargo and passenger movement on National Waterway-1.

Improving Carrying Capacity:

•         The Government is implementing Jal Marg Vikas Project (JMVP) for capacity augmentation of navigation on NW-1 (Varanasi-Haldia stretch) with the technical assistance and investment support of the World Bank.
•     The specially designed vessels will navigate on low drafts with high carrying capacity and at the same time, environment friendly.
•     It is specialised in low draft and high carrying capacity vessels.
• The new designs will translate into a savings of Rs 30-50 lakhs in the building of a vessel.
•    The new designs will obviate the dependence of Indian Ship builders on foreign ship designs for IWT and prove to be a boost to ‘Make in India’ initiative of the Government.

Freely Available Design for all:

•  Available free on the IWAI website, the designs will remove ambiguity on the class and type of vessels that can sail on river Ganga with efficient maneuverability.
• They will help shipyards build vessels of standardized dimensions and capacity and make them available off the shelf besides developing the ‘sale and purchase’ market for inland vessels.
•  The designs will lead to reduced fuel costs and in turn lesser logistics costs.

Details of the Design:

•   The new designs for various categories of dry and liquid bulk carrier, Ro-Ro vessels, car carrier, container carrier, LNG carrier, Tug Barge flotilla (Table below) have been made by M/s DST, Germany.
• These vessels will sail even in depths of about two metres carrying about 350 cars on a five deck car carrier.
•    Some of the designs would enable movement of bulk cargo carriers with capacity of 2500 tonnes at three metres depth.
•  Thus it will help removing almost 150 truckloads of pressure from the road or one full rail rake with the plying of just one such vessel.