For the first time the maritime community and stakeholders from nine South Asian nations came together to Mumbai to collectively explore the business opportunities and resolve the challenges.
One Forum. One Voice. The South Asia Maritime and Logistics Forum and the Containers India conferences were what the industry just needed. Be it ease of doing business, better policies for maritime trade or a logistics regime that would streamline all the land side operations, the industry spoke in one voice advocating the change it needed for the region to grow. Amidst new reformative policies and unprecedented structural changes, container trade in India and the world has seen a year of survival as the drastic changes are making every firm rethink and re-draw its strategies. The SAMLF and Containers India presented to all the executives and industry persons new trends that were shaping the industry.
For the first time, about nine countries in South Asia came together to see how they can all work together as a region that is shaping up to be a driver of economic growth, trade and market expansion creating a massive opportunity. Maritime professionals from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Singapore and Nepal spoke of the expanding logistics sector and the related services that have caused disruption in the trade. The forum spoke of the many business prospects for the global transportation industry. It is expected that the Intra-Asia trade and South Asia’s greater trade expansion with Africa will have sound growth over the next decade. In this backdrop of knowledge of increasing shipping and logistics capacities to connect people and businesses along with governments of South Asia, this was an organised platform.
The forum was ratified and endorsed by none other than the Shipping Minister, Nitin Gadkari who outlined the projects undertaken by various ports and improvements made on the land side infrastructure by deepening and strengthening road connectivity, establishing a separate firm to lay new rail lines and ensure faster movement of goods to and from the ports through the Sagarmala programme.
The forum that was the brainchild of Maritime Gateway and Colombo International Maritime Conference events was hugely successful in generating great interest among all the stakeholders to develop new maritime opportunities in India. The goal of the conference was to explore opportunities, find solutions for exisiting challenges and share best practices with each other. In doing this, the forum was hugely successful as the delegates returned with all this and much more.
The fifth edition of the Containers India conference provided the market intelligence to the Indian Container Industry on the changes to be dovetailed into operations to ensure the industry strides well in to the coming years.
The Containers India conference debated the most profound and critical issues facing the industry. The policy initiatives introduced by the Government were closely examined and many a leader came forward to how these decisions had a lasting impact on the industry. Container supply chain stakeholders also looked at the digitisation of the entire supply chain and the changes that are impacting the container trade. For the Indian Container trade, this was a forum that helped in collectively identifying issues to see how they can all work together in making India a place to do business with ease.
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