India's robust domestic trade boosts container cargo growth

INDIA's state-run container rail operator Container Corporation of India (Concor) suffered losses last year - the first time in 20 years - but with world trade recovering and domestic cargo growing, the company feels on track to achieve better results this year.

"We feel the overall position will be better than last year. We expect to make over INR38 billion (US$812.5 million) in gross revenues," said Concor managing director Anil Gupta.

"Revenues have shown strong growth rates. Cargo volumes have also registered an average annual growth rate of over 10 per cent," he said in an interview with India's Business Standard.

"Domestic trade in container cargo is looking up. We have seen an 18.5 per cent increase in the segment over the last year. The country's exports also posted a healthy growth of 18.2 per cent in November - the first in 11 months," said Mr Gupta.

"The International Container Transshipment Terminal at Vallarpadam, which we are setting up with DP World, is likely to be commissioned in March. Fifteen container train operators have entered the market since 2005," he said.

"The imbalance in traffic, with containerised exports lagging behind imports in 2009, had led to the accumulation of empty containers in the hinterland, which shipping lines were evacuating at their own cost. We hope exports will now increase further and bring down expenditure.

"First-mile and last-mile costs of container transport are quite high. As a result, overall door-to-door costs for rail operators turn out to be substantially higher than the direct door-to-door costs being offered by road operators," he said.

"This works against the railing of containerised cargo, especially if the commodities to be carried are light-weight commodities. We are working on the hub-and-spoke model to capture domestic traffic. Besides, we have picked up equity stake in ports to give a boost to our exim trade. We operate the third terminal at Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNPT), which handles the maximum amount of exim containerised cargo in the country." said Mr Gupta.
 

Source: SchedNet