Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will soon be heading a port infrastructure development initiative called National Sagarmala Apex Committee (NSAC). The cabinet note proposes an empowered committee to function under the NSAC, headed by the cabinet secretary with secretaries of shipping, transport, tourism, defence, home, environment, revenue, expenditure, chairman, railway board and a representative of the prime minister’s office (PMO) as members. The PM’s committee is expected to oversee Sagarmala Development Company (SDC) with the shipping minister as its chairman and the shipping secretary as the co-chairman. This company will assist port-development and linkage projects in the private sector and also on public private participation models. The governmentis expected to spend about Rs 12,000 crore for the first phase of the Sagarmala project and Rs 5,000 crore in the next five years for setting up 10 Coastal Economic Regions (CER) around clusters of ports. The SDC will primarily assist with equity support for special purposes vehicles (SPV) which are to be set up in the states or CERs. Initially, the project is expected to take up two coastal economic clusters, one on the east coast and the other on the west coast, the Visakhapatnam-Kakinada-Gangavaram-Srikalahasti cluster on the east and the Mumbai-Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNPT) - Dighi- Jaigadh cluster on the west coast. The project is aimed at expanding ports, promoting port-led development in coastal economic regions, boosting coastal shipping and inland water ways stringing them all with road and rail traffic.