National Logistics Policy Reflects Government’s Positive Intent: Experts

The National Logistics Policy has been created to address all the core challenges of the logistics and supply chain industry and reflects the government’s positive intent, Anshuman Singh, Chairman and Managing Director of Stellar Value Chain Solution said.

According to experts, the policy sets the roadmap for developing a more interconnected and tech-driven framework for building cost and operational efficiency in the sector.

Singh said that it will not only inspire all logistics players to come together and collaborate to build logistics competitiveness globally but also increase the confidence of investors who are keen to invest in the logistics sector.

According to him, by realigning the operational dynamics and formulating the pathway to reduce the logistics cost to a single-digit, the policy puts the industry on the cusp of the next phase of growth.

Rizwan Soomar, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, DP World Subcontinent said that the multi-pronged approach by the government adopted in the policy to suggest regulatory and procedural reforms across infrastructure, services and human capital provides a comprehensive strategic direction to the sector and will be a key catalyst in attracting investments.

The focal push for digitisation through platforms like Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP) and E-LogS is crucial to support the designed services improvement framework in improving regulatory inter-operability, standardisation of logistic processes and in bringing the entire multimodal network onto a single digital dashboard, enhancing visibility and transparency for all stakeholders.

According to Vineet Agarwal, MD at Transport Corporation of India, the push towards seamless multimodal transportation and modern connectivity will be a game changer as it will shift the transportation stress from just road to other modes as well.

The ULIP tenant of the NLP will enhance visibility for customers and enable logistics companies like TCI to adopt digitisation at a much larger scale, Agarwal stated.

The new logistics policy will help make the sector an integrated, cost-efficient, resilient, and sustainable logistics ecosystem in the country as it covers all bases of the sector along with streamlining rules and addressing supply-side constraints, said Pranav Goel, Co-founder-CEO, Porter.

The Digital Integration System for logistics ecosystems will lead to seamless and faster work-flow, making logistics significantly efficient, he said.

The e-handbook launched for the standardisation of the warehousing sector, will enable the small and large third party logistics and warehousing players in standardising their processes and automating their systems and processes thus reducing cost and leading to higher profitability, said Lancy Barboza, MD, Flomic Global Logistics Ltd.

“NLP will help the last-mile to be more efficient and faster to fill up the gap of transporter where business can benefit in terms of time and cost,” said Zaiba Sarang, Co-founder, iThink Logistics.

According to Prashant Rane, CEO, Oneworld Logistics, policy has taken a holistic approach towards addressing various pain points of the logistics industry and has laid out a blueprint for systematic growth of the sector.

“The policy aims to provide structure to a highly fragmented and unorganised logistics sector. Tech enabled solutions backed by infrastructure development will provide the much-needed impetus to the sector,” he said.

The need for a national logistics policy was felt since the logistics cost in India is high as compared to other developed economies. It is imperative to reduce the logistics cost in India for improving the competitiveness of Indian goods both in domestic as well as export markets. Reduced logistics cost improves efficiency cutting across various sectors of the economy, encouraging value addition and enterprise.

Since 2014, the government has put significant emphasis on improving both, Ease of Doing Business and Ease of Living. National Logistics Policy, a comprehensive effort to address issues of high cost and inefficiency by laying down an overarching interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral and multi-jurisdictional framework for the development of the entire logistics ecosystem, is yet another step in this direction. The policy is an endeavour to improve the competitiveness of Indian goods, enhance economic growth and increase employment opportunities.

It has been the vision of the Prime Minister to develop world-class modern infrastructure through the integration of all stakeholders in holistic planning and implementation so that efficiency and synergy are achieved in the execution of the project.