- The Centre is likely to announce a scheme for an integrated warehousing network in the Budget,2019.
- The aim of the scheme will be to operationalise a national warehousing grid’ to effectively integrate the highly fragmented warehousing market in India.
- The scheme is likely to be similar to Maharashtra where the government has kicked off a scheme for identifying warehouses spread across various government departments and institutions to be then taken over and managed by one nodal agency.
- Currently,much of the country’s warehousing capacity outside of the agriculture sector is in the unorganised sector with small warehouses of less than 10,000 sq ft area.
- According to NITI Aayog,out of the total warehousing space of about 180 million sq ft in the country,the industrial segment accounts for about 86% and the agricultural sector the rest 14%.Two-thirds of the warehousing capacity in the food storage segment is owned by the public sector.
- Further,the scheme comes at a time when India’s warehousing capacity, apart from conventional storing services is increasingly being used to offer value-added services such as the consolidation and breaking up of cargo, packaging, labelling, bar coding and reverse logistics.
Budget may unveil a national warehousing grid to plug key gaps, Maharashtra model
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