New Delhi, October 6: The Union Cabinet on Tuesday approved setting up the Integrated Transport and Logistics Authority (ITLA), a new body that will plan, appraise and monitor transport projects across roads, railways, ports, aviation and waterways.
ITLA will be set up as a special purpose vehicle (SPV). According to the government, it is meant to deal with long-standing problems caused by planning and implementation being split across several transport ministries and agencies.
A national transport master plan
ITLA will be the apex body for integrated transport and logistics planning, research, project appraisal and monitoring, policy support and data analytics.
It will prepare a National Transport Master Plan with a horizon of ten years or more. The plan will cover roads, railways, ports and shipping, civil aviation, inland waterways, coastal shipping, urban mobility and logistics.
The authority will also review the five-year sectoral plans and annual plans of transport ministries to check that they are in line with the master plan and support multimodal infrastructure.
Projects of ₹500 crore and above
ITLA will carry out technical appraisal of Government of India infrastructure projects costing ₹500 crore or more. Financial appraisal will continue through the existing mechanisms.
It will monitor transport and infrastructure projects above ₹500 crore, provide a coordinated way to resolve problems that come up during implementation, and assess the impact of these projects once they are complete.
One transport database
The authority will build a National Transport Data Repository using data from sources including GSTN e-way bills, FASTag, Vahan, GPS-based systems and urban traffic management systems. The data will be used for analysis such as freight flows and origin-destination patterns, to help with planning, monitoring and impact assessment.
ITLA will also advise on the review and updating of the National Logistics Policy 2022, run capacity building, training and skilling in the logistics sector, and promote research in transport and logistics.
The government said the authority would help improve multimodal connectivity and infrastructure efficiency, reduce logistics costs and make India more competitive in global logistics.
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