Ports fortify imports and exports. For India, with a vast coastline of over 6000 km, ports are gateways to international trade and commerce. Ports offer tremendous potential for development and growth of a wide spectrum of maritime activities such as international shipping, coastal shipping, ship repairs, fishing, captive ports for specific industries, all weather ports, tourism and sports. There are 13 major ports and 185 non-major ports all along the coastline of the country.
Huge investments in the ports sector have become imperative so that infrastructure in the ports sector gets modernized, upgraded and is expanded to allow handling of higher volumes of cargo in the existing ports as well as in the new ports to be developed.