Government of India has given priority to the development of National Waterways with the objective of making them a robust and sustainable mode of transportation. Globally, Inland Water Transport (IWT) has long been recognized as a viable mode of transport with many advantages over other modes of surface transport viz. road and railways, especially for bulk goods, over dimensional cargo and hazardous goods. Inland Waterway is considered to be the most environment friendly mode of transportation with its excellent fuel efficiency and lower emission levels. It can provide high capacity transport corridors along with rail and road.

In order to develop inland water transport as a supplementary mode for transportation of coal on the National Waterway - Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) proposes to convene a stakeholder's consultation meeting tentatively in the first week of September 2015, which is open for all the stakeholders / prospective bidders to obtain their feedback/facilitation required for implementation of the project through private sector participation. The objective of the meeting is to collate stakeholders / prospective bidder's suggestions / facilitation / interventions required so that same could be considered for suitable incorporation in the tender document.

A brief of the project, scope of work of Operator and Obligations of IWAI & NTPC is provided in Annex-I  .