India’s maritime sector has rarely received the kind of attention it did recently in Mumbai. At the India Maritime Week 2025 (IMW-25), ports, shipbuilding, and reform were firmly at the center of the national agenda. An ambitious $1 trillion-plus investment roadmap was unveiled, signaling opportunities across the blue economy, digital port infrastructure, and green corridors. As with such set-piece spectacles, the events were framed as a celebration of the recent gains in the commercial maritime arena — shorter container dwell times, faster vessel turnaround, record cargo volumes and port surpluses, and India’s emergence as the world’s third-largest supplier of seafarers. The underlying message was clear — India is open to maritime investment and ready to lead.
The optimism was evident during Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi’s address to the Maritime Leaders’ Conclave. Citing enhancements in supply-chain security, streamlined documentation, and 100% foreign direct investment in ports and shipping, the PM described how the maritime sector had, in his words, positioned India as a “steady lighthouse in rough global seas”. He pointed to two infrastructure milestones — a megawatt-scale green hydrogen facility at Kandla and the expansion of JNPT’s Bharat Mumbai Container Terminal, backed by record foreign investment from Singapore — as emblematic of India’s maritime aspirations.
The appraisal rests on measurable gains. Container dwell time has fallen below three days, and vessel turnaround now averages under 48 hours — figures comparable to those in advanced maritime economies. Cargo throughput at major ports is at an all-time high, and the number of operational inland waterways has grown to almost thirty. India’s human capital in shipping is also expanding rapidly, with Indian seafarers making up almost 12% of the world’s seafaring workforce, placing the country among the top three suppliers globally. Together, these advances point to the emergence of a nascent shipping and commercial ecosystem.
Even so, India’s maritime managers confront a troubling paradox. Despite visible gains, the country’s maritime governance is beset by structural weaknesses that inhibit real progress. Notwithstanding massive public investment in port infrastructure, growth in the sector is largely owed to a handful of high-performing ports — notably JNPT, Mundra, and Vizhinjam — while many smaller facilities continue to struggle to attract private investment or generate meaningful throughput. The bulk of India’s coastal cargo still moves through large gateway ports, with smaller, privately owned ports catering primarily to export-import trade rather than domestic movement. That points to a troubling anomaly. The government’s push for coastal shipping and port-led industrialization has not translated into a balanced growth story. A few ports are thriving, but the broader network — especially State-controlled and non-major ports — remains underutilized.
India’s inland waterways tell a similar story. The sector has registered impressive percentage growth in recent years, yet it carries only a small fraction of the country’s total freight traffic. Most movement is confined to a few commodity-specific corridors, leaving vast stretches of the national waterways network largely idle, raising questions about whether investments in the sector have meaningfully served the logistics needs of the hinterland economy.
Not that the government’s efforts are in any way misdirected. The focus has broadly been well placed — especially on green hydrogen and sustainable shipping. The pilot hydrogen facility at Kandla is especially laudable, marking an important first step toward decarbonising the maritime sector. Even so, India still lacks a comprehensive regulatory framework for green bunkering and fuel certification (notwithstanding recent guidelines by the DG Shipping). With an aging, mostly oil-fired merchant fleet, green fuels require a long-term plan for retrofitting and propulsion system replacement. But that, in turn, hinges on shipyard modernization and technology partnerships, requiring levels of investment that appear impractical in the near term.
Part of the problem for the government is that the risk appetite among foreign investors remains modest. Maritime infrastructure is a long-gestation, capital-intensive business, marked by a degree of investment circumspection. Over the years, public and private enterprises have signed numerous MoUs and issued intent declarations, but conversion rates have remained historically modest. The case of the Sagarmala Program is instructive: Only a quarter of the over 800 projects envisaged have come to fruition. While IMW-25 has secured investment pledges worth 12 lakh crore and over 600 MoUs, it remains to be seen how many will translate into actual investment.
Notably, India’s recent maritime reforms — the Merchant Shipping Act 2025, the Indian Ports Act 2025, and the Coastal Shipping Bill 2025 — remain largely untested frameworks for investors. Uncertainty persists over their implementation, particularly amid weak inter-agency coordination. Investor confidence is also dampened by the government’s reluctance to adopt internationally recognized dispute resolution mechanisms, having instead empowered Dispute Resolution Committees under the new Ports Act. In the absence of regulatory transparency, procedural friction remains a persistent concern, further eroding investment appetite.
That is not to suggest that the investment climate has turned adverse — far from it. The recent Singapore-backed expansion at JNPT shows that many investors continue to believe in India’s growth story and the opportunities it offers. But these are still outliers, not indicators of a broad-based trend. With cargo shipping growth worldwide shrinking rapidly (now at 0.5%, down from 2.1% in 2023-24), investor sentiment remains largely conservative.
India’s maritime transformation, then, remains a work in progress. The trillion-dollar roadmap, while bold in ambition and visionary in scope, rests on fragile institutional underpinnings. For all the talk of MoUs and investment pledges, green corridors and digital infrastructure, what investors seek is clarity — in law, in process, in dispute resolution. What they need is policy predictability and consistency in execution.
The government’s emphasis on building a financial ecosystem — with avenues for ship leasing, maritime insurance, and infrastructure credit — does little to offset the absence of a regulatory framework that could ease procedural friction and address persistent gray areas. That reality should give Indian planners pause: Policy coherence, not capital or incentives, will ultimately bridge the gap between promise and performance.
Abhijit Singh is the former head of the Maritime Policy Initiative at ORF, New Delhi. The views expressed are personal
