Context: In her Budget speech, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman spoke about doubling the ship recycling capacity by 2024 and attracting more ships to India from Europe and Japan.

What is the existing ship recycling capacity at Alang? How has it performed in the last decade?

• Alang has 153 plots or ship-breaking yards developed on a 10-kilometer long coast in Bhavnagar district.
• Only 131 plots have been allotted for ship-breaking activities and just 80 plots have ships for breaking. So, at present 48 per cent of the existing ship-breaking capacity at Alang is lying idle.
• In the year 2011-12, a record 415 ships with a total 3.85 million Light Displacement Tonnage (LDT or weight of a vessel without fuel, cargo, etc) had come to Alang.
• This was the only year when the Alang ship-breaking had come close to its full capacity of 4.5 million LDT. Thereafter, there has been a steady decline in the number of ships coming for dismantling.
• In 2019-2020, only 202 ships with 1.62 million LDT came. During the current year (till January 2021), 199 ships with 1.8 million LDT have come, which is a marginal improvement over last year’s figures.

Which countries send ships to Alang?

• Most of the ships that come to Alang are registered in countries that are considered tax havens like Panama, Barbados, St Kitts & Nevis, etc.
• Ship owners in European Union own 35 per cent of the merchant vessels of the world. Similarly, Japanese also have a large fleet.
• There are ship owners from UAE and Russia too. We get ships from different parts of the world. However, in the past, most of the Owners in the EU and Japan did not sell the ageing ships to us as our yards did not follow the required standards.

Where do ships from EU and Japan usually go for dismantling?

• Both European Union and Japan adhere to strict norms related to dismantling of ageing ships. There are many EU ship owners who want us in Alang to have an EU complaint yard. It is difficult as the EU wants to monitor ancillary industry.
• EU norms require categorisation and tracking of every pollutant from the ship, till it is safely disposed of. The EU wants a record of every pollutant on the ship. They want these pollutants to be documented and disposed of safely.
• Currently, ship recyclers at Alang do not do regular follow ups with authorised agencies who have asked to dispose of the pollutant.
• Surveyors from the EU have been visiting Alang for the last six years, but nothing concrete has happened so far.

• Most of the ships from the EU go to Turkey where ship-breaking yards are compliant with EU norms.

Can more ships be attracted to Alang from the EU?

• Shipbreakers at Alang feel that as more and more shipbreakers adhere to the centre’s guidelines and get HKC certification, more ships are expected to come to Alang.
• India hopes that its recent accession to Hong Kong International Convention (HKC) for the safe and environmentally sound recycling of ships in 2019 will help the country attract more ageing vessels.
• The provisions of HKC have also been included in the new Recycling of Ships Act, 2019.

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/ship-recycling-alang-capacity-ageing-ships-europe-japan-7174436/

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