NEW DELHI: As part of the year-end review, the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways reviewed the planning and development of Multimodal Logistics Parks (MMLP).

The Ministry finalized the Model Concessionaire Agreement (MCA) for the MMLPs to be developed under the Bharatmala Pariyojana in October 2021 through an elaborate process of inter-Ministerial consultations. The document serves as the Developer Agreements / Concession Agreements for the individual MMLP projects under the Pariyojana. In addition to the MCA, the Ministry, in November 2021, also finalized and approved the Model RFP document of selection of Concessionaire for development of MMLPs.

A network of 35 Multimodal Logistics Parks is planned to be developed as part of Bharatmala Pariyojana, with a total investment of about Rs 46,000 crore, which once operational, shall be able to handle around 700 million metric tonnes of cargo. Of this, MMLPs at 15 prioritized locations will be developed with a total investment of about Rs 22,000 Crore.

These Multi-Modal Logistics Parks shall serve as regional cargo aggregation and distribution hubs for various industrial and agricultural nodes, consumer hubs and Export Import gateways such as seaports with multi-modal connectivity. In certain cases, the MMLPs are also being developed in tandem with the Inland Waterway Terminals under the Sagarmala Pariyojana to further reduce the cost of inland cargo movement at a much larger scale as compared to conventional road-based movement.