Vijayawada not in list of Centre's logistics parks

New Delhi: Is the Centre reluctant to approve a Multi-Modal Logistics Park (MMLP) of scale being developed by the ministry of road transport and highways to Vijayawada? Yes, going by the answer of the Union minister concerned, Nitin Jairam Gadkari.

In reply to a question of the YSRCP Parliamentary Party Leader V Vijayasai Reddy, in this regard in the Rajya Sabha here on Monday, the minister said that the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) had approved Phase-1 of Bharatmala covering 24,800 km roads under the Bharatmala Pariyojana additional to the 10,000 km of residual roads at the financial outlay of Rs 5.35 lakh crore. Apart from the above projects, the CCEA had also mandated the ministry to develop 35 MMLPs.

Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada had been chosen then for the same.

However, the minister added that the pre-feasibility study at Vijayawada indicated that there was limited demand for developing a MMLP of scale being developed by the ministry. As for Visakhapatnam, the study was under progress, he said.

The minister further added at length the benefits of the MMLPs explaining that those contained various facilities for inter-modal connectivity and inter-modal freight handling, warehouses, cold storages, custom bonded area and support facilities, provide one stop solution and reduce transportation costs, inventory handling costs and substantially resolve inefficiencies present in the logistics ecosystem.

MMLPs, by acting as logistics hubs, are expected to enable shifts in the logistics network from traditional point to point to hub and spoke model. In the hub and spoke model, MMLPs act as a centralised hub for receipt and dispatch of goods from and to smaller locations called spokes.

Goods from companies (spokes) are collected at MMLPs (hub), transported over long distances to destination locations through larger trucks / trains. At destination, another hub MMLP receives goods and sends them out to various nearby locations (the spokes) for consumption. Vijayawada seems to be out of it now.