Merchant Shipping Act, 2025

The Merchant Shipping Act, 2025, which received Presidential assent on 18 August 2025, is a consolidated Indian maritime statute intended to replace the Merchant Shipping Act, 1958 and the Coasting Vessels Act, 1838 once formally notified into force. It modernises India's shipping regulatory framework, including provisions governing coastal (cabotage) trade, and is expected to carry forward India's incremental liberalisation of coastal shipping restrictions, with a stated target of 230 million tonnes of coastal cargo by 2030. The 1958 Act's Section 407 historically reserved India's coastal trade for Indian-flagged vessels, a cabotage restriction long argued to raise domestic logistics costs. A General Order dated 21 May 2018 relaxed this specifically for foreign-flagged vessels carrying export-import (EXIM) transhipment and empty containers, without requiring a Directorate General of Shipping licence, after which the share of India's container traffic transhipped through foreign ports (chiefly Colombo and Singapore) fell measurably. India's cabotage experience is frequently cited in comparative policy discussions alongside the United States' Jones Act, 1920, a structurally similar coastal-trade restriction. Both instruments balance a genuine strategic-shipbuilding and wartime-sealift rationale against the economy-wide logistics cost that blanket cabotage restriction imposes.

• 1 Presidential assent: 18 August 2025
• 2 Replaces the Merchant Shipping Act, 1958 and the Coasting Vessels Act, 1838, once notified
• 3 Carries forward India's cabotage (coastal trade) liberalisation
• 4 Target: 230 million tonnes of coastal cargo by 2030
• 5 1958 Act's Section 407 historically reserved coastal trade for Indian-flagged vessels
• 6 2018 General Order relaxed cabotage for EXIM transhipment and empty containers
• 7 Comparable foreign law: the US Jones Act, 1920

India's 2018 cabotage relaxation, which reduced the share of container traffic transhipped through foreign ports from about 34% to 30% within a year, is often cited as evidence for the case Michael Bloomberg made for repealing, not merely waiving, the US Jones Act.