Despite a meagre growth in the recent world output, the world seaborne trade, world fleet of ships and new shipbuilding activities have continuously increased over time. The global shipbuilding activities have shifted in favor of those countries which have a comparative cost advantage and efficient shipyards. Although India remained passive in the 1990s in shipbuilding activities, since 2000 shipbuilding activities have boosted its economy, and its share in the global order book depicted an impressive trend. Consequently, huge investments are coming up in the Indian shipbuilding industry. Given this background, the paper attempts to analyze select Indian shipyards to review their efficiencies using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The review provides a feedback regarding the operations at the Indian shipyards and helps in identifying the possibilities of increasing the output and sources of inefficiency.

The shipbuilding sector exhibits dual natureglobal character; as well as high government intervention. Paradoxically, shipbuilding activity is highly globalized in terms of sales, but simultaneously it is highly nationalized in terms of organization of production with fairly high levels of government intervention. The shipbuilding activity is highly influenced by the shipping (freight) markets, secondhand sale and purchase market and demolition market. Although there are various other factors influencing the shipbuilding sector, global shipbuilding activities are found to be highly concentrated in selected geographical regions from time to time. The leadership in global shipbuilding activities has gradually shifted from Europe to Japan to Korea, and recently China has emerged as a major player.

In this context, India has also identified an opportunity to develop its shipbuilding infrastructure. Although India's share of shipbuilding production in the world output is just 1.17%, it ranks among the first five major shipbuilding nations. As India has about 12 major ports and approximately 184 operational non-major ports on its vast coastline of 1,600 kms, the shipbuilding infrastructure along with port infrastructure is being developed with an integrated approach to create maritime clusters. Till the last decade, the Indian shipbuilding sector was dominated by public sector shipyards, but recently the Government of India invited private sector participation to make the Indian shipyards globally competitive.

Infrastructure Journal, Shipbuilding Infrastructure, Indian Shipyards, Data Envelopment Analysis, Indian Shipbuilding Industry, Government Intervention, Shipbuilding Production, Indian Shipbuilding Sectors, Chinese Shipbuilding Infrastructure, Gross Domestic Product, Global Economic Crisis, Public Sector Shipyards, Decision Making Units.