India Launched Two Credit Insurance Policies for Shipbuilders on 13 October 2026, With the Government Subsidising the Premiums and Backing the Insurers on Claims

On 13 October 2026, at the 21st Maritime State Development Council meeting in Mumbai, the Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways launched two credit insurance policies for Indian shipyards. ECGC Ltd developed the Shipbuilding Project Credit Risk Insurance Policy, which covers export projects. The New India Assurance Company developed the Business Credit Shield Policy for Shipbuilders, which covers domestic ones, according to Maritime Gateway and GKToday.

Premiums will be subsidised by the government, which will also give insurers direct support when shipyards make claims, All India Radio, the Free Press Journal and Maritime Gateway report. Credit insurance pays the seller when a buyer fails to pay, and for a shipyard that is a risk carried for the years between signing a contract and handing over the vessel.

Why one late payment matters to a shipyard

A ship is not paid for in one go. Under the ministry’s draft guidelines, the cover has to fit contracts built around advance payments, milestone payments tied to stages of construction, payments on delivery and retention money, which is a part of the price the buyer holds back.

At the council meeting the Union Minister said a single missed milestone payment could stall an entire shipyard’s operations, Maritime Gateway reports. All India Radio quotes him calling shipbuilding a “massive, multi-year undertaking” and reports the aim as letting yards build vessels without being held back by late payments or sudden shifts in global markets.

Two government-owned insurers

ECGC is a Government of India enterprise headquartered in Mumbai. It sells export credit insurance and pays exporters and banks when buyers default or become insolvent, according to its website, which also shows it registered with the insurance regulator IRDAI.

New India Assurance is government-owned as well. Its website says it was founded in 1919 by Sir Dorabji Tata, was nationalised in 1973, is India’s largest general insurer, and held a 12.74 per cent market share in 2025-26.

What the cover is designed to protect

The two policies come out of a drafting exercise that ran in October 2025. A committee set up by the Directorate General of Shipping brought together the ministry, ECGC, New India Assurance, the Sagarmala Finance Corporation, the Shipyards Association of India, the Indian Shipbuilders Association, the Shipping Corporation of India and Cochin Shipyard. It met four times between 15 and 30 October 2025 and reported on 3 November 2025.

Its draft guidelines describe three kinds of cover:

• Pre-shipment insurance protects a yard from losses if the buyer cancels or defaults during construction, and covers production costs already incurred and potential lost profit.
• Post-shipment insurance covers non-payment after delivery because of disputes, defects, political instability or other factors.
• Vendor default insurance covers advances a yard has paid to a supplier that then fails to deliver a critical component.

Applicable to all registered Indian shipyards, the draft names ECGC for export-linked cover and New India Assurance for domestic shipbuilding. Minutes of the meetings record the expectation that policies would be written contract by contract and run for 2 to 6 years, to match build times. India Briefing reports that the scheme guidelines announced on 27 December 2025 include a framework for “government-backed insurance for pre-shipment, post-shipment, and vendor-default risks.”

None of the reports on the 13 October launch says which of the three covers each new policy contains.

The ₹1,443 crore behind the policies

Both policies sit inside the Shipbuilding Development Scheme, which the Union Cabinet approved on 24 September 2025 with an outlay of ₹19,989 crore. The Press Information Bureau (PIB) lists the aims as 4.5 million gross tonnage (a measure of a ship’s enclosed volume) of yearly shipbuilding capacity, mega shipbuilding clusters, an India Ship Technology Centre under the Indian Maritime University, and risk coverage including insurance support for shipbuilding projects.

Per the committee report, the fund for credit risk cover is ₹1,443 crore, about 7 per cent of the scheme. A later PIB reply to Parliament says ₹9,930 crore of the scheme goes to greenfield shipbuilding clusters with shared infrastructure such as breakwaters and channel and basin development.

That scheme is one of three parts of a ₹69,725 crore package approved the same day. The other two are the Shipbuilding Financial Assistance Scheme, extended to 31 March 2036 with ₹24,736 crore, and a ₹25,000 crore Maritime Development Fund. Together the three figures make the package total. PIB says the package is expected to create 4.5 million gross tonnage of capacity, nearly 30 lakh jobs and about ₹4.5 lakh crore of investment.

What yards are already drawing on

The insurance arrives alongside a financial assistance policy that was already running. In a Lok Sabha reply on 14 March 2026, the Union Minister said 288 contracts worth ₹19,748 crore, covering 456 vessels, had received in-principle approval, and that ₹620.57 crore had been paid to 23 shipyards for 204 vessels.

That reply also cites a third-party assessment of the sector in 2024, which found an employment multiplier of 6.4 and named the constraints on growth as weak domestic demand, high cost of financing, and limits on capacity and technology. PIB says the September 2025 package was approved to address those.

Yards are delivering too. INS Samarthak entered Navy service on 16 October 2026, three days after the insurance launch, as the first major warship built by an Indian private shipyard. The Navy took nine Indian-built ships into service in 2026 between 27 February and 12 October.

What had not been published by 29 October 2026

Coverage of the launch gives no premium rates, subsidy percentages, coverage limits, exclusions or claim conditions. The Week says the ministry had not yet clarified them and adds that these details will decide how well the policies cover payment risk over long construction schedules.

In November 2025 the committee report left several decisions to the National Shipbuilding Mission, the body set up to oversee the package. They include which agency releases the funds, whether private insurers or reinsurers can join in later phases, and how product design and pricing are approved. Its draft said premiums should be nominal because the government supplies the fund. Whether the policies launched in October kept that wording is not stated in the reports.

A separate insurance scheme approved in April

Neither policy is the Bharat Maritime Insurance Pool. PIB reported on 18 April 2026 that the Union Cabinet had approved the creation of that pool, with a sovereign guarantee of ₹12,980 crore. It is meant to cover hull and machinery, cargo, protection and indemnity, and war risk for Indian-flagged and Indian-controlled vessels. It insures ships in service. The October policies protect the yards that build them.

The rest of the council’s agenda

This was the council’s first meeting since it became a statutory body under the Indian Ports Act, 2025. It set March 2027 as the deadline for every port to apply the One Nation One Port Process, which standardises documents and procedures, and to connect to the Maritime Single Window, Sagar Setu. It made electronic publication of port tariffs mandatory and launched a Ready Reckoner to guide implementation. States and Union Territories were asked to notify their subordinate rules under the Act within three months.