India is undergoing a period of rapid economic growth and the freight forwarding industry in India is growing in tandem.

In order to help promote economic growth in India, the government is investing in developing its transport infrastructure so that the country can continue on its path towards becoming a more industrialised nation, with transport links that make international freight more seamless and cost-effective.

The shipping company operating in India already faces a choice between a large number of modes of transport by road, rail and air. The demand for transport infrastructure has been rising by around 10% a year and the government is investing heavily in making improvements, which is excellent news for freight services companies and shipping companies.

At present, there are more than 335 civilian airports in India and 20 international airports. More than 50% of all the air traffic in India is handled by The Indira Ghandi International Airport and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport, Air India has recently ordered more than 60 new jets from Boeing in a 7.5 billion US dollar investmentand other Indian airlines are also increasing the size of their fleet.

Road transport in India is currently underdeveloped and, as an example of this, there are only 13 million cars on the roads in India. However, despite the poor road infrastructure and the fact that trucking freight from Gurgaon to the port in Mumbia can take up to 10 days, the National Highways Authority reports that about 65% of freight transport in India is by road.

It is therefore not surprising that the government and private sector are investing in this mode of freight transport and this will reap dividends for the freight company in and shipping company in due course. Right now, only very few of the national highways are made of concrete – the leading one being the Mumbai-Pune Express way. However, recently work has started on a national system of multi-lane highways. This includes the Golden Quadrilateral and North-South and East-West Corridors, linking the largest cities in India.

Investment in the road infrastructure will be a great boost to those involved in freight services in India as the current system is so poorly developed that only 200km of the road network in India is classified as express ways. Under the National Highways Development Project, some of the most important national highways will be upgraded to four lanes or even six lanes in places.

The current dominance of the rail system over road transport is also reflected in freight transport trends, with rail being very important for freight forwarding in India.

The rail network in India is actually the fourth most heavily used system in the world and it transports over 6 billion passengers as well as 350 million tons of freight every year. Proposals have been made to introduce high speed rail in India, notably the proposal to build a Maglev track in Mumbai, connecting it to New Delhi as well as other parts of Maharashtra in the form of the Mumbai Maglev.

Also, in the last decade, the Konkan Railway Corporation introduced a Roll On Roll Off service (RORO), which is a system to synergise the road and rail systems, on the section between Kolad inMaharashtra and Verna in Goa and this has since been extended to Surathkal in Karnataka. This is great news for freight services in the area.

However, it is the waterways that are the most significant for international freight transport in India. Roughly 95% of international freight goes through the ports in India.

Mumbai Port and JNPT (Navi Mumbai) handle 70% of the maritime international freight in India. There are no less than twelve major ports in India – Kandla, Mormugao, Kochi, New Mangalore, Navi Mumbai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Paradip, Vishakapatnam, Ennore, Chennai and Tuticorin. Quite apart from these important centres for shipping companies, there are a further 187 smaller ports of which 43 handle freight forwarding.

Sea transportation in India is managed by the Shipping Corporation of India, which is a government owned company.This company also manages the marine transport infrastructure in India. It owns and operates roughly 35% of all Indian tonnage and services the requirements of both national and international freight. The company has a fleet of nearly 80 ships. As across the rest of the freight transport infrastructure in India, the outlook is one of continued investment and expansion, despite the recent global economic gloom.

India also has an astonishing network of inland waterways – no less than 14,500 miles in total. However, freight transport by waterways is still very underdeveloped in India, in comparison with other countries of comparable size. The total amount of freight services accounted for by travel on inland waterways is less than 1% of the total inland traffic in India. This compares with 32% for Bangladesh. The only part of India where freight forwarding by inland waterways is significant is on a handful of waterways in Goa, West Bengal, Assam and Kerala.

So although significant investment in the transport infrastructure in India is already under way and freight companies are benefiting from this, there is still a long way to go until India can begin to match the sophistication of more developed nations.

Author Bio: Stephen Willis is Managing Director of RW Freight Services a UK based freight transport company, established in 1971 and operating worldwide freight forwarding services including specialist freight services to and from India

Category: Business
Keywords: Freight services,shipping companies,international freight, freight transport, freight forwarding, freight company, shipping company