New Delhi: With EXIM trade poised to touch over $700 billion (Rs28,00,000 crore) from the current figure of $270 billion over the next three years there is need to focus on container efficiencies to leverage this booming trade.
G K Pillai, Secretary,ministry of commerce, Government of India while addressing the Annual Conference on CENTRUM 2007: “Containerization - Building Trade Competitiveness” organized by CII, stated that this quantum leap in trade would bring additional stresses on infrastructure. Resultantly, there was need to bring in additional investments on supply chain infrastructure for containerization.
Quoting the success story of airport privatization, he said this would be a reflection of the Government assigning due importance to beefing up infrastructure in the country.
SEZ development was a success story that created national debate on the creation of policies related to SEZ’s. Currently mutltiple models were available for SEZs and this could augur well for development of trade competitiveness and employment generation. SEZ’s have brought about greaterinter-miinisterial cooperation.
Areas of concern
* Hinterland connectivity critical to ensure seamless flow of containers and improved port productivity.
* To have a world class logistics system, India to develop strategic focus.
* Ministry of Commerce to facilitate trade related containerized supply chain issues for trade competitiveness.
Future trends
* Current volume of 6 million TEU’s can go up to 20 million TEU’s with a possibility of going upto 30 million TEU’s considering a hub and spoke traffic model.
* To cater to the need for transshipment, it is important to focus on few ports on both coasts with deep draft.
* Requirements of a transshipment terminal would be a strategic location, potential to reduce total transport cost using ‘hub and spoke’ arrangement, financial savings in terms of lower land values, less need for dredging and the facility to receive higher-capacity vessels to reduce overall fleet costs.
* Development of an intermodal supply chain strategy optimizing the existing infrastructure while building future capacities is the need of the hour.
* Changing need for containerized logistics keeping in mind the customer perspective would help bring greater efficiency.