India's Maritime & Shipping Reforms
India rewrote the legal foundations of its ports-and-shipping economy in 2025, retiring statutes that dated to the British era. Parliament cleared four connected laws — a new Indian Ports Act, a Merchant Shipping Act, a Carriage of Goods by Sea Act and a Coastal Shipping Act — and the government layered on Sagarmala 2.0, a shipbuilding-first spending push and the sector's first dedicated lender, SMFCL. On 8 August 2026 the ministry added the digital layer, E-Samudra, one online window for port, shipowner and seafarer services. One part of the trade already leads the world: India broke up 35.4 percent of global ship tonnage in 2025, almost all of it on the Alang-Sosiya beaches in Gujarat. The gap is the fleet itself: at the National Shipping Board's first Sagar Samvad on 25 August 2026 the ministry put India's yearly freight bill to foreign lines near $75 billion and backed a plan to add 100 Indian ships in five years.
- Indian Ports Act 2025
- Merchant Shipping Act 2025
- Coastal Shipping Act
- Sagarmala 2.0
- SMFCL
- MoPSW
- Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047
- Carriage of Goods by Sea Act
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