India aspires to position itself as an alternative to China as a global goods producer, bolstered by the rapport between its Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and the US President, Donald Trump. However, it faces a significant limitation: a shortage of port infrastructure and the absence of a domestic container fleet. While the country is home to the Shipping Corporation of India, it operates only four ships, all engaged in coastal shipping. To overcome this hurdle, the government has announced the creation of a company dedicated to global container transport, to be named Bharat Container Line (Bharat being the traditional name for India).
This announcement was made by the Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Sarbananda Sonowal, who stated that the new company will operate a fleet of one hundred container ships, either owned or chartered. Funding is reportedly already in place, sourced from a three billion dollar fund established for maritime development, and the company will be formed through a public-private partnership involving the Shipping Corporation of India and the state-owned oil company, Bharat Petroleum.
Sonowal also declared that Bharat Container Line will begin operations by 2025, though he did not specify the number of ships or how the container vessels and trained crews will be acquired. The goal is to cover global routes, with connections to Asia, the Middle East, the Americas, and Europe, aiming to capture a twenty percent share of container shipping to and from India by 2047. However, ships alone will not suffice to manage India's ambitious export targets. While the missing capacity can be supplemented by other companies, the issue of ports remains.
India's main container port is Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai, with a capacity of six million TEU, expected to expand to ten million by 2029; it handles fifty-five percent of India's container traffic. Following are Mundra Port in Gujarat with five million TEU, Chennai Port in Tamil Nadu with 1.2 million TEU, and Visakhapatnam Port in Andhra Pradesh with 512,000 TEU. To address this shortfall, the Indian government has ambitious projects in the pipeline, notably Vadhavan Port in Maharashtra, which, with an investment of 9.1 billion dollars by 2029, is expected to handle 23 million TEU, and Wadhawan Port in Dahanu, projected to handle ten million TEU by 2034.
