The Government has reviewed India's Shipbuilding sector following the  announcement of measures under the Union Budget 2025–26 and adopted a 4-pillar  strategy to revitalize the shipbuilding sector. The Government has accordingly approved a  comprehensive package of ₹ 69,725 crore to strengthen domestic shipbuilding  capacity, maritime financing and skilling. The key components of the shipbuilding  package include: 
 

Shipbuilding Financial Assistance Scheme (SBFAS), an extension of  Shipbuilding Financial Assistance Policy (SBFAP), with outlay of ₹ 24,736 crore to  address cost disadvantages of Indian shipyards vis-a-vis global shipyards; 

Maritime Development Fund (MDF) corpus of ₹ 25,000 crore for providing long  term financing support to shipbuilding and maritime sector comprising a Maritime  Investment Fund (MIF) of ₹ 20,000 crore and Interest Incentivisation Fund (IIF) of ₹  5,000 crore; 
 

Shipbuilding Development Scheme (SbDS) with ₹19,989 crore outlay to expand  Indian shipbuilding output capacity to 4.5 million Gross Tonnage annually by setting up greenfield shipbuilding clusters and capacity expansion of the existing  shipyards. These targets have been set to position India as a competitive global  shipbuilding force in line with the vision contained in Maritime India Vision 2030 and  Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047 documents.
 

Policy reforms have been undertaken to revamp the shipbuilding industry including  implementation of classification of large vessels as infrastructure and demand  aggregation. The government on 19th September 2025, notified infrastructure status to  Indian-flagged commercial vessels with a Gross Tonnage (GT) of 10,000 or above. For  vessels constructed in India infrastructure status was accorded to vessels of size 1,500  GT or above. As part of demand aggregation, a fleet acquisition plan of 400+ vessels  has been prepared which provides long term order visibility to the Indian shipyards. 

The scheme guidelines to operationalize SBFAS have been issued on  26.12.2025 and in-principle approvals for shipbuilding financial support are given in  accordance with scheme guidelines. The guidelines for MDF have also been issued  on 20.02.2026. Further, SBI Ventures Limited has been appointed as the Fund  Manager for MIF on 26.05.2026. 

As on-date, under SbDS, Government has accorded in-principle approval for  the development of three greenfield shipbuilding clusters at Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat  and Tamil Nadu. SbDS provides financial assistance for development of common  maritime and land based infrastructure for the greenfield clusters. Further, under SbDS,  the India Ship Technology Centre (ISTC) has been established as a Section 8 company  to promote the overall development of the Indian shipbuilding sector by enhancing  capabilities in ship design, research and development (R&D), skill development,  software, and other related areas. As regards skilling development, the details of  various steps taken are as under: 

11 shipyards have signed MoUs with 34 ITIs across 8 coastal States towards  implementation of on the job training (OJTs). As part of this, a 150-hour OJT model has  been introduced. 727 trainees have already been trained till date in these yards. 

Training of Trainers (ToT) program has been implemented at 2 Industrial  Training Institutes (ITIs) in West Bengal by Centre of Excellence in Maritime and  Shipbuilding (CEMS). 

A preliminary Skill Gap Study has been completed across 9 shipyards.

A total of 92,697 candidates have been trained/skilled/upskilled during the last  3 years.
 

A Plan of Implementation (PoI) has been signed between MoPSW and Korea  International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) for a skill development project in the  shipbuilding sector. 

As per the latest UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report, India’s  shipbuilding output increased by 41% from 40,923 GT in 2024 to 57,637 GT in 2025 .  The comprehensive shipbuilding package of Government of India has instilled  confidence in Indian shipyards, resulting in the placement of several large commercial  and export shipbuilding orders to existing shipyards. In the last two years in-principle  approvals have been given for financial assistance under SBFAP and SPFAS to the Indian  shipyards for a total contract value of ₹15,234 crore. Under the SbDS scheme, so far,  in-principle approval has been given to proposals of four shipyards for brownfield  capacity augmentation of their facilities for ship-building and ship-repair at a total  estimated cost of over ₹2,500 crore. Given the high employment multiplier of 6.4 in the shipbuilding industry, the above developments have catalysed generation of large  numbers of direct as well as indirect employment. 

This information was given by the Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Sarbananda Sonowal, in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

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MI/Indu

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