The Union Cabinet has approved the creation of a new national apex body for transport planning, the Integrated Transport and Logistics Authority (ITLA), to bring scattered ministries and agencies under one planning framework.
The decision was taken at a Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and announced on Tuesday by Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. ITLA will be set up as a Special Purpose Vehicle, functioning as the apex institution for integrated transport and logistics planning, research, project appraisal, monitoring, policy support and data analytics.
What ITLA will do
The authority's central job will be preparing a National Transport Master Plan with a planning horizon of ten years or more, covering roads, railways, ports and shipping, civil aviation, inland waterways, coastal shipping, urban mobility and logistics. It will also evaluate short-term sectoral plans of around five years and the annual plans of transport ministries to keep them aligned with the longer-term national blueprint and to promote multi-modal infrastructure development.
ITLA will take up the technical appraisal of central government infrastructure projects costing Rs 500 crore or more. Financial appraisal of such projects will continue through existing mechanisms. The authority will also monitor implementation of large projects, help resolve issues through a coordinated mechanism and carry out post-implementation impact assessments.
A unified data backbone
A key component of the new authority will be a National Transport Data Repository that brings together transport and logistics data from multiple sources, including GSTN e-way bills, FASTag, Vahan, GPS-based systems and urban traffic management systems.
The move is aimed at fixing what the government described as a long-standing challenge: fragmented planning and implementation across multiple transport-related ministries and agencies. "The requirement of logistics is increasing. Practically, if GDP grows by 7%, the logistics requirement grows by 10%," Vaishnaw said at the media briefing after the Cabinet meeting. He added that while the Gati Shakti portal was launched earlier for unified planning, ITLA will serve future requirements by getting major infrastructure ministries and sectors to plan together over horizons of ten, fifteen or even thirty years.
The government said the authority is part of the Vision 2047 push to reduce logistics costs and improve infrastructure efficiency.
Sources: Indian Express — Cabinet greenlights new apex body to oversee transport and logistics, Hindustan Times — Cabinet approves Integrated Transport Logistics Authority for unified road, rail planning
The decision was taken at a Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and announced on Tuesday by Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. ITLA will be set up as a Special Purpose Vehicle, functioning as the apex institution for integrated transport and logistics planning, research, project appraisal, monitoring, policy support and data analytics.
What ITLA will do
The authority's central job will be preparing a National Transport Master Plan with a planning horizon of ten years or more, covering roads, railways, ports and shipping, civil aviation, inland waterways, coastal shipping, urban mobility and logistics. It will also evaluate short-term sectoral plans of around five years and the annual plans of transport ministries to keep them aligned with the longer-term national blueprint and to promote multi-modal infrastructure development.
ITLA will take up the technical appraisal of central government infrastructure projects costing Rs 500 crore or more. Financial appraisal of such projects will continue through existing mechanisms. The authority will also monitor implementation of large projects, help resolve issues through a coordinated mechanism and carry out post-implementation impact assessments.
A unified data backbone
A key component of the new authority will be a National Transport Data Repository that brings together transport and logistics data from multiple sources, including GSTN e-way bills, FASTag, Vahan, GPS-based systems and urban traffic management systems.
The move is aimed at fixing what the government described as a long-standing challenge: fragmented planning and implementation across multiple transport-related ministries and agencies. "The requirement of logistics is increasing. Practically, if GDP grows by 7%, the logistics requirement grows by 10%," Vaishnaw said at the media briefing after the Cabinet meeting. He added that while the Gati Shakti portal was launched earlier for unified planning, ITLA will serve future requirements by getting major infrastructure ministries and sectors to plan together over horizons of ten, fifteen or even thirty years.
The government said the authority is part of the Vision 2047 push to reduce logistics costs and improve infrastructure efficiency.
Sources: Indian Express — Cabinet greenlights new apex body to oversee transport and logistics, Hindustan Times — Cabinet approves Integrated Transport Logistics Authority for unified road, rail planning
