For achieving PM Modi's Atamnirbhar Bharat vision, India should be self-sufficient in manufacturing containers: Goyal

Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday said that for achieving the Atamnirbhar Bharat vision and mission of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India should be self-sufficient in manufacturing the containers to meet the shortage of the best quality containers.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony of a webinar on "Indigenous containers manufacturing" the minister called for manufacturing indigenous containers with GPS enabled technology for better logistics which is the life-line of the Indian Industry.

Goyal said, "There is a need for refrigerated containers and instead of depending on the imports of such containers we should manufacture them indigenously to work towards making India self-sufficient in the maritime economy."

He especially emphasised enhancing the production of Corten 6 quality steel for manufacturing good quality containers.

The minister also stated that a large country like India which is on the path of high growth but faces a chronic shortage of containers for its exports needs to seriously explore the possibility of containers being manufactured in India.

As envisaged in the make in India and Atma Nirbhar Bharat schemes indigenous manufacturing of containers will generate employment and will save precious foreign exchange apart from helping in faster exports, said the Ministry of Railways.

According to the ministry, at present, Containers Coporation of India Limited (CONCOR) has a fleet of 37000 ISO containers.

Earlier India has been mostly depended on the import of containers manufactured by China, it said.

( With inputs from ANI )