Enhancing warehousing stock for business opportunities: Chairman, WDRA

New Delhi, 13 September 2024: The Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA) Chairman Mr. T K Manoj Kumar stressed upon the need for upgrading the existing warehousing stock for business opportunity. The goal is not just to introduce new stock into the market, but to be more productive and reduce storage losses as well, at the National Conference on Logistics and Warehousing for Viksit Bharat organised by ASSOCHAM.

At the outset of the conference, Mr. T K Manoj Kumar, Chairman WDRA said that most of our big cities have warehouses in the outskirts or in the middle of the cities because these were constructed a long time ago. Now, there is a need for taking the warehouses to the farm gateway. It is the only way that we would be able to cover more goods in warehouses and reduce storage losses and so on.

There is a huge push on infrastructure as we can see. We have to build beyond infrastructure as there is the soft side of running a logistics and a warehousing industry. It is very important to have digitization across the board if we are to have an efficient system. The second aspect is standardization. It is very important that all the warehouses, logistic facilities conform to a particular standard, otherwise interoperability and efficiency will suffer, he added.

Now, that brings me to this whole issue of what does the warehousing development and regulatory authority do? To put it in a nutshell, we are responsible for one important thing that is to enforce, make sure that all the warehouses in the country which are registered with us, conform to a particular standard. So, any warehouse which is registered with us, you can have a guarantee that the infrastructural standards are up to the mark. Secondly, we are implementing a system of negotiable warehouse receipts in this country.

A warehouse receipt system is important because it engenders trust in the receipt. If it is a negotiable warehouse receipt which has been checked by a government agency like ours, then you can be very sure that it contains the underlying books of the quantity and quality which are mentioned in this. You can imagine the advantages they give for doing ease of business and increasing trust among the various participants in a resource, he further stated.

All the negotiable warehouse receipts are digitized receipts. Therefore, registering a warehouse with WDRA would mean that your warehouse confirms to a standard and you have a digitized receipt attached.

As far as registration of warehouses with WDRA is concerned, it has been increasing at a growth rate of 43% of CAGR in the last two years, which is good. There will be registered aggregate warehouses now, which are third-party warehouses. We don’t register captive warehouses. As per the NABARD survey, there are about one lakh warehouses in the country which are aggregate warehouses, said Mr. Kumar.

And industry understanding is that out of this one lakh warehouses, 40,000 are public warehouses. We have registered roughly 4,500 odd warehouses now. So, we have roughly 12% of the warehouses registered with us.

The negotiable warehouse receipts should be utilized for getting pledge finance for the commodities, which are stored in our warehouses.

Mr. Rakesh Kumar Meena, Director, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Ministry of Commerce and Industry also underlined the Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s vision for transforming India into a developed nation by 2047. Mr. Meena further highlighted that to enhance infrastructure planning and coordination, the Prime Minister introduced the PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan. To further support this initiative and improve logistics services, the National Logistics Policy (NLP) was launched.

During the key address at the National Conference, Mr. Prakash Gaur, CEO, National Highways Logistics Management Limited, emphasised the increasing focus on the Logistics Sector in recent years. He acknowledged the private sector’s role in expanding Warehousing Infrastructure and stressed the importance of collaboration that has reduced logistics costs from 14% to 9%. He noted that this reduction has boosted India’s global competitiveness, particularly in Product Innovation and cost efficiency.

Other who also spoke during the conference were Mr Manuj Adlakha, Co-Founder, Bootes & Cargo People, Shri Sanjay Bajpai, Co-Chairman, National Council on Logistics & Warehousing, ASSOCHAM & Executive Director, Container Corporation of India Ltd., Mr Girish Singhi, Co-Chief Investment Officer, Welspun One and Mr Manish R Sharma, Partner, PwC.