Freight Smart Cities on the verge of reducing logistics cost

05 Jul 2021 CW Team

On Friday, the Ministry of Commerce unveiled plans to the media for freight smart cities to enhance urban freight efficiency and build an opportunity for a drop in logistics costs.

Under the freight smart cities initiative, city-level logistics committees would be created, and they will have associated government departments and agencies at the local and state levels.

The Ministry said that these would also involve the private sector from the logistics services and also users of logistics services.

On the freight smart city initiatives, the logistics division is operating closely with GIZ (Germany) under Indo-German Development Cooperation, Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and RMI India. A challenge is anticipated to be declared to boost the participation of cities in this initiative, it said.

The Ministry aims to increase the list from ten cities required to be identified on an immediate basis to 75 cities in the next phase before mounting up all over the nation, involving all state capitals and cities, having more than one million population.

However, the cities to be considered would be finalised in discussion with the state governments.

Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, began a website on 'Freight Smart Cities' and issued a handbook describing 14 measures that can enhance urban freight, if implemented.

Puri directed the states to identify ten cities, to start with, to be developed as freight smart cities and to establish institutional mechanisms for the same.

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Also read: Smart City Mission: Aurangabad civic body to invest Rs 1,000 cr

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