PM to flag off first shipment on INSTC routes
The commencement of the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) will be flagged off by the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, on April 13 from Mumbai.
The beginning of multimodal transport services between India, Iran and CIS countries from April this year has been jointly promoted by the Ministry of Commerce, export organisations and Federation of Freight Forwarders Association of India (FFFAI).
Sunil Kumar, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Commerce, Government of India, informed, “To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between India and Russia, the Prime Minister would flag off the first containerised shipment, to be transported via INSTC route. This route links India and Central Asia and Russia via Iran by saving significant amount of time.”
Commending FFFAI’s initiatives to enhance bilateral trade from India, especially on INSTC route, Kumar pointed out that the Dry Run carried out by FFFAI in 2014 and transportation of five containers from Bengaluru to Moscow via INSTC route in October 2016 have demonstrated that compared to the traditional route from Mumbai via St. Petersburg which takes about 41 days, the INSTC routes take only about 20 to 25 days. Efforts are underway to further reduce the transportation time to 19 days. This initiative would also reduce transaction cost drastically.
At this stage, there are two operational INSTC routes; one is Mumbai — Bandar Abbas — Astara — Samur — Moscow and second is Mumbai — Bandar Abbas — Amirabad — Astrakhan — Moscow. “There is huge scope of ex-im trade and logistics services on this route. At present, the government has set a target of 1500 containers movements on this route every month. Especially, there would be a tremendous requirement of cold chain logistics services to cater to the demand for perishable cargo,” added Kumar. Samir Shah, Chairman, FFFAI, emphasised on the ongoing joint activities by the Ministry of Commerce and FFFAI, reiterating the latter’s commitments towards future programmes. He expressed high optimism for various measures like Single Window, RMS, DPD, to name a few.
This route links India and Central Asia and Russia via Iran by saving significant amount of time. Efforts are underway to further reduce the transportation time