Indian Ports Association becomes the latest member of IPCSA
The Indian Ports Association (IPA), an apex body of Major Ports under Administrative Control of Ministry of Shipping, Govt. of India, has become the latest member of the International Port Community Systems Association (IPCSA).
India is a nation that has been working for many years now on its digital infrastructure and enabling of e-governance. PCS 1x has been rolled out by IPA to offer a true single window for the port and maritime community for sharing data and information. PCS1x has grown in scope and penetration over the last year and a half with significantly better utilisation than its predecessor, which was deployed on premise at major ports in 2006. Since going live in December 2018, the new PCS1x has tripled the user base and reduced the turnaround time of (Customs) batch mode of EDI exchange from 30 minutes to under 4 minutes.
Over 27 identified stakeholders have role-based access to the new PCS1x hosted on Cloud, giving them a better user experience as they interact with the ports, terminals, each other and the end user. It has provisions for translating messages of different standards to facilitate meaningful exchange of data with multiple external systems in required formats
Generally other countries PCS caters EXIM trade of single port/terminal, while Indian PCS1x architecture is designed in such a way that it not only caters 12 Major Ports but other 200 Non-Major Ports of India as well, of which 8 are currently on-boarded. PCS1x is addressing the way in which information is passed on a real-time basis by integrating with various stakeholder systems bringing speed, transparency and efficiency leading to reduction in errors, faster processing times.
Currently 12 major ports have fully implemented PCS1x with over 16000+ users transacting. Moreover, private ports including Mundra, Pipavav, Hazira, Kattupalli and Dahej have commenced adoption.
With the success of PCS1x over the past year and with the constant support of various organisations, the Government of India is now working towards developing a revolutionary national maritime single window known as ‘National Logistics Portal (NLP-Marine)’ encompassing complete end-to-end logistic solution.
