The Cochin Shipyard is going for a major capacity augmentation to the tune of around Rs 1500 crore. The attempt is to sustain the growth of ship repair and ship building in the country. The decision was announced
during a recent meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Shipping, which met to discuss functioning of the Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL).
The CSL is going for a couple of new initiatives which include setting up of a new dry dock capable of docking rigs and semi submersibles, developing a ship-repair facility at the Cochin Port Trust and taking up offshore fabrication work for ONGC and others at a dedicated offshore location.
Cochin Shipyard CMD Commodore K Subramaniam said that it is essential to make investment for capacity augmentation. The financial and technical feasibility reports for these new initiatives along with the revenue projections will be ready by December.
The approximate cost for the expansion is likely to be Rs 1500 crore, which will be subject to the confirmation at the feasibility study stage. Cochin Shipyard plans to meet a part of its expenditure for expansion through IPOs.
Shipping secretary P K Sinha explained the background of the disinvestment and the Central Government’s policy. Speaking at the meeting Shipping Minister G K Vasan said that India aims to attain self-sufficiency in ship-repair and emerge as a dominant ship repair centre in Asia by raising the share of Indian shipbuilding in the global shipbuilding market to 5 percentage share by 2020.
The vision document of the Ministry ‘Maritime Agenda 2010-2020’ aims to have a developed shipbuilding and ship repair industry of international standards in the country, he said.