Aiming to increase the global share of Indian merchant navy officers to 9% by 2015 in the wake of shortage of personnel, the government plans to acquire four training ships at a cost of Rs 500 crore.
India is the fifth largest supplier of officers globally at present having a share of 6.3% out of 5,50,000 officers.
"The acquisitions will be made through state-owned Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) and each dedicated training vessel is likely to carry 400 trainees. The cost for four vessels to be acquired is estimated at Rs 500 crore," a Shipping Ministry official told PTI.
There is acute shortage of trained manpower in the space in view of increasing fleet size and the number of officers globally is likely to swell to 6,60,000 by 2015, he said.
"Shortage of officers is likely to be become acute by 2013 and India can very well aspire to increase its market share to 9%, the official said adding it will have to supply 65,000 additional officers by 2015.
In this regard, the Ministry is planning to increase the on board training slots from 4,000 at present to 16,000 in the next few years.
Also, the Ministry plans to undertake promotional campaigns, including mass media advertising, direct marketing, school and college contact programmes etc at an estimated expenditure of Rs 20 crore.
Earlier this year, Shipping Minister GK Vasan while unveiling the maritime agenda for shipping sector that envisaged Rs 5 lakh crore investment in the space by 2020, also stressed the need for grabbing more market share by the Indian seafarers.
