Policies, initiatives aimed at making India a leading nation in cruise tourism: Sarbananda Sonowal

Chennai, Jun 30 (PTI) The country's policies and initiatives were aimed at making India one of the leading nations in the cruise tourism sector, Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said on Monday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said, gave a lot of emphasis whether it was modernisation or port-led connectivity, coastal community development, inland waterways, coastal shipping, and in every other sector so that India became one of the leading maritime nations in the world.

"Public-private partnership is also coming up... Our target is to create more employment opportunities for the people," the Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways said.

Briefing mediapersons about the ASEAN-India Cruise Dialogues 2025, which he inaugurated here earlier in the day, Sonowal said India was hosting the event for the first time. "The dialogue was mainly to develop our collaboration, co-operation to promote the cruise industry," he said.

He opined that ASEAN and India could play a very big role in the sector. "We want to have a major share of our participation in the promotion of sea and river cruising," Sonowal said, and added that the idea was to have a cruise circle involving all the countries.

Earlier, inaugurating the Dialogue, the union minister said India was committed to creating a holistic ecosystem for promoting cruise tourism. For the last eleven years, India took numerous initiatives on policy, legislative, taxation, and infrastructure to promote cruise tourism. "We now have a dedicated Cruise Bharat Mission to focus exclusively on the speedy development in this sector," he said.

Led by the 'Act East Policy' of the Prime Minister, India was strengthening the maritime linkages with ASEAN nations. "Our 11,000 km coastline, 1,300 islands and ancient seafaring legacy with ASEAN nations uniquely position us to become the hub of global cruise tourism in the region," Sonowal said.

"We propose to co-create and co-promote cruise circuits connecting India’s coastal and riverine hubs with ASEAN ports, backed by modern infra, PPP models, harmonised customs protocols and real-time tracking systems," he further said.

India saw a huge surge in cruise passengers and river cruise tourism in the past 11 years and this momentum would be sustained and spurred to turn the shared blue waters into bridges of prosperity, people-to-people connections and sustainable growth, he said.

Cruise Bharat Mission was set to propel India's cruise tourism industry. In the last 11 years, the country witnessed a 166.66 per cent increase in cruise calls and 486.14 per cent increase in cruise passengers.

Sonowal laid the foundation stone for four projects at Chennai Port, along with Union Minister of State for Ports, Shipping and Waterways Shantanu Thakur, related to cruise tourism and seafarers welfare.

The Cruise Bharat Mission, in collaboration with the ASEAN Secretariat, is hosting the ASEAN-India Cruise Dialogue 2025 from June 30 to July 1, in Mahabalipuram. This flagship two-day forum brings together over 30 delegates from all 10 ASEAN member states: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam alongside over 40 senior government and industry representatives from India. PTI JSP KH