The Indian government has announced the immediate launch of a plan
five-year period to double the number of cruise ship calls
in national ports and double the number of passengers. The
program will be divided into three phases aimed respectively at
to increase cruise ship landings in the two-year period 2024-2025
in seaports by modernising the current cruise terminals and
promoting tourist destinations as part of the
cruise companies, to develop the activity of the cruise industry in the three-year period 2025-2027
cruise industry by building new cruise terminals and developing
river cruises and, finally, to strengthen the
In the three-year period 2027-2029, cruise activity among the
islands, with the aim of creating 400,000
new jobs.
The plan, called the "Cruise Bharat Mission", which is
was announced yesterday by the Minister for Ports, Maritime Transport
and the Waterways, Sarbananda Sonowal, visiting the port of
Mumbai, plans to increase cruise traffic in ports
from 500 thousand passengers in the first phase to one million
passengers in the third, with a number of cruise ship stopovers
which correspondingly should rise from 125 to 500. In the segment
of river cruises an increase in traffic is expected
from 500 thousand to 1.5 million passengers. The plan also provides for
to increase the number of international cruise terminals in ports
from two in the first phase to ten in the last phase and
increase the number of river cruise terminals from 50 to 100. The
plan also includes an increase from one to five in the number of
marinas for recreational activities.
Underlining that "the Cruise Bharat Mission represents
A watershed in the renewal of the cruise industry
of India", the minister highlighted that the
cruises, which has enormous potential in India, has remained at
and the new plan aims to reverse this trend
building on new infrastructure,
development of the cruise experience for tourists and on the
sustainability of resources.