Mumbai transhipment goal realistic
20 Feb 2011
The prospect of Mumbai emerging as a transhipment hub in the near future has been held out by top port consultant, Sanjay Mehta, chief executive of Maia Intelligence.
This could happen within “the next couple of years", he said in an interview with Port Strategy.
Much of his argument rests on the current economic boom in India which has seen gross domestic product growth and an influx of foreign investment. “The government is putting the right policies in place and there is both private and public consumption,” he said of the India upswing.
Mumbai on India’s West coast could also be central to serving ports along that coast and in populous countries like Pakistan and the Middle East as well as the East coast of Africa, he added.
However, the problems of security and industrial relations in Mumbai and the claims of other possible transhipment centres such as Chennai - which is well connected to Southern India and even Sri Lanka where much Indian and Chinese investment is going on in the ports sector - threaten to curtail these aims.
