ashok321
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2010
- Messages
- 17,942
- Reaction score
- 4
- Country
- Location
http://www.businesstoday.in/magazin...ina-relation-india-pakistan/story/263807.html
There was jubilation all around at Deendayal Port Trust - the former Kandla port - on October 29, as the first of six shipments of wheat bound for Afghanistan left Indian shores. What was so special about the shipment? It was the first time any large consignment from India was travelling to landlocked Afghanistan bypassing Pakistan. Over the next few days, the wheat was shipped 650 nautical miles (1,200 km) to Chabahar port in Iran, and thence another 635 km by road to Zahedan on Afghanistan's western border. Until India began building two berths at Chabahar port - which have been leased to it by Iran for 10 years - surface transport from India to Afghanistan was impossible without passing through Pakistani territory. The new route is so crucial to both India and Afghanistan that both External Affairs Ministers, Sushma Swaraj and Salahuddin Rabbani, respectively, monitored the consignment's departure via video conferencing.
The Chabahar berths not only provide India a route to Afghanistan but also to Central Asian markets, without having to join the Chinese-promoted 'One Belt, One Road' (OBOR) initiative. Though some have criticised India for staying away from OBOR - in which a host of Asian and European nations are involved - External Affairs Ministry say that whatever objectives India could have achieved by joining OBOR can be fulfilled by other means as well. In any case, a vital component of OBOR is the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), as Chinese Premier Xi Jinping himself acknowledged at the OBOR conference in May this year. Given that the CPEC passes through Pakistan-occupied Gilgit and Baltistan, there was no way India could have endorsed OBOR. "OBOR or no OBOR, India must chart it own path," says T. C. A. Rangachari, former diplomat. "We need to find ways to repair our economy and locate our own markets and reach them."
Indeed, the India-China competition for regional clout has now found a new arena. If India intends to use Chabahar, China has nearby Gwadar port, which it has leased from Pakistan for 40 years and which, through the CPEC will connect to Kashgar on its western border. Fortunately for India, the CPEC project has been delayed due to opposition from various sections in Pakistan which claim the terms are biased in China's favour. India has used the opportunity to accelerate the completion of its Chabahar berths, which were expected to be fully operational by December 2018 but may now be ready months earlier. "Work is proceeding on a war footing," says a Ministry of Shipping official. The berths are being built by India Ports Global Pvt Ltd, a joint venture of Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust and Deendayal Port Trust. Indian business has every reason to hope that once Chabahar gets going, apart from foodgrain, trade in heavy engineering goods, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, agricultural produce, automobiles and more with Afghanistan, Iran and the Central Asian republics will see a major fillip.
So far this year India's trade with the five key Central Asian countries - Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan - has been a mere S1.6 billion. These markets are dominated by Chinese, Russian and European products, but India believes its trade can increase manifold if it can build convenient trade routes. Accordingly, apart from Chabahar, India is also seeking to use the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, further west of Chabahar. In September 2014, India held a trial run of an empty container tagged with a GPS device, from Mumbai by sea to Bandar Abbas and thence by road to Astrakhan in southern Russia, passing through Azerbaijan and found this route substantially reduced transport costs to the region.
No doubt bottlenecks remain, both within the country and beyond, but India is trying hard to overcome them with dedicated freight corridors, industrial corridors and the series of ports it is building under the Bharat Mala project. As part of the agreement to develop Chabahar port, Iran is to get a $150 million loan from India, but has yet to complete the formalities which will enable EXIM Bank to disburse the first tranche. (India's control of the two berths will become operational as soon as the loan is disbursed.) Shipping ministry officials, however, assured that many matters had been streamlined between the two countries and the disbursal was likely to happen soon. Again, tariffs along the trade routes and other logistical details of trade have yet to be finalised with both Iran and Afghanistan. Even so, a beginning has certainly been made.