SURESH PRABHU

Former Minister of Commerce & Industry and Civil Aviation, Government of India

he biggest hurdle the Indian business faces, among other barriers, is logistics. We must distinguish between logistics and infrastructure. Infrastructure is a basic necessity for logistics but just by creating infrastructure one cannot address the problem of logistics. Despite investing enough into infrastructure in the last decade or two, the logistics problem

Thas not been solved. We need to focus on integration in the logistics industry. We have invested huge amount of money in last few years into development of roads, but can one confidently say that it has necessarily resulted into better logistics? Therefore while we need roads, railways, ports and air connectivity, we also need to ensure all the modes need to work in tandem and they produce the desired results. Logistics is little more than infrastructure.

No industry can grow without logistics. One of the most underrated industries in COVID-19 pandemic is logistics. Everyone has talked about doctors and health workers as warriors but what about logisticians? Despite being the ones who made medical supplies available and ensured that farmers’ produce does not go waste in this crisis; the industry didn’t get the recognition.

We give this data to our customers as well. I would also like to say COVID-19 is an opportunity for the logistics sector. We have been saying that we spent 14 per cent of our GDP in logistics and we should get it down to 7-8 per cent. But if you look at the data of US and Europe or any other developed country, they were able to do it only on the back of technology. IT spend in US is 50 per cent of total logistics spend.

Inputs by Kalpana Lohumi

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