Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister of Ports, Shipping & Waterways and Ayush, Sarbananda Sonowal, and Union Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways, Gen (Retd) VK Singh today witnessed the signing of a tripartite agreement for swift development of modern Multi Modal Logistics Parks (MMLPs) under Bharatmala Pariyojna across the country.

The aim is to centralise freight consolidation and reduce logistics cost from 14% to less than 10% of GDP, to be at par with international standards. The tripartite agreement was signed by National Highways Logistics Management Ltd (NHLML), Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) and Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL).

Nitin Gadkari said MMLPs will ensure that cargo is swapped/shifted from and to waterways, dedicated freight corridors and road transport.

Sarbananda Sonowal said MMLPs are designed to untie the cobweb of logistics movement and enliven the logistics sector to put the economy into the fast lane of growth, he added.

MMLP will be a freight handling facility with rail and road accessibility, comprising of container terminals, cargo terminals (bulk, break-bulk), warehouses, cold storage, facilities for mechanised material handling and value-added services such as customs clearance with bonded storage yards, quarantine zones, testing facilities and warehousing management services along with other associated facilities. Developed under a ‘Hub-and-Spoke’ model, the MMLP will integrate multiple modes of freight transport through highways, railways and inland waterways. The agreement underlines the cooperation and collaboration model between the three bodies in order to achieve efficiency in logistics movement within the country. 

The MMLP project is poised to develop state-of-the-art large scale warehousing facility for different types of commodities, to become one stop solution for all services related to cargo movement like warehousing, custom clearance, parking, maintenance of trucks etc. The MMLPs will focus on a technology driven implementation for a state-of-the-art freight management system. Many value added services like packaging, repackaging and labelling will be available in these projects.

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