The recently announced package of ₹69,725 crore, to revitalise India’s shipbuilding and maritime ecosystem, is to replace the package of 2015, which is set to expire in March 2026. In the last 10 years, while lucrative defence orders had kept some shipyards busy, only half-a-dozen small merchant ships or so were built in all of India. India’s capacity to build large merchant ships remains minuscule, which the package hopes to expand to 4.5 million gross tonnage. The plan is to upgrade shipyards for cutting-edge technology and management principles, promote new yards in clusters housing factories for shipbuilding ancillaries, and support shipowners for financing newbuilds. But key questions remain over how this package will succeed as the earlier one was largely a failure.

Globally, shipbu

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