Peter S. Goodman and Hari Kumar of The New York Times report that efforts to build new ports and expand existing docks could determine whether India emerges as a legitimate option for global factory production. They write:
The Rishiri Galaxy, a Panamian-flagged tanker one and a half times the length of a football field, sat tethered to the dock on a muggy day at the Jawaharlal Nehru Port on the west coast of India. Freshly arrived from the Persian Gulf, it bore industrial chemicals — raw materials for Indian factories that make pharmaceuticals, auto parts, cosmetics, construction materials and scores of other modern concoctions.
At a second terminal nearby, overhead cranes plucked shipping containers off another vessel operated by Maersk, the Danish shipping conglomerate, setting them onto the beds of trucks. The trucks would haul this cargo — electronics from South Korea, palm oil from Indonesia, machinery from Europe — to warehouses throughout the world’s most populous country.
Roughly one of every four shipping containers passing through India is loaded or unloaded here, on the docks jutting into the Arabian Sea just south of Mumbai. The flow of containers has roughly tripled over the past two decades, reaching the equivalent of 6.4 million 20-foot boxes last year. Yet by the standards of the world’s largest ports — many of them in China — it remains a small operation. […]
The major action is aimed at Vadhvan, an industrial area 100 miles up the coast. There, the port authority is proceeding with plans to construct an enormous facility that will have capacity to move 20 million 20-foot containers per year, roughly triple the size of the existing Navi Mumbai port.
The project, estimated to cost more than $9 billion, is to be built in two phases, with completion in 2035. It recently gained the approval of India’s cabinet. […]
The question is how long those efforts will take to finish, and whether they can keep pace with growing volumes of cargo. The demands will be even greater if India emerges as a viable alternative to industry in China.
“Rail and road both have to move faster,” Mr. Wagh said.
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