With a growing e-commerce sector and the implementation of the Goods & Services Tax Act 2016, India’s logistics sector is expected to add more jobs by 2022.

A report released by the human resources company TeamLease has said that growing infrastructure and GST implementation will boost the logistics sector by a rate of 10.5% annually.

The seven sub-sectors – road freight, rail freight, warehousing, waterways, air freight, packaging and courier services – will create over 245,000 new jobs in Chennai region and 3 million jobs across the country by 2022 due to infrastructure investment, industry evolution, consumption and public investment, the report added.

“The sector is undergoing a colossal shift with expansion of industrial corridors, creation of multimode transportation models, adoption of technology and packaging innovation and urbanization,” said Sudeep Sen, assistant vice president, TeamLease Services. “Key government initiatives like the National Highway Development Project (NHDP) with the Chennai-Bangalore- Chitradurga Industrial Corridor will not only focus on opportunities in the region. This will not only create innumerable job opportunities but also metamorphose the skills landscape for the logistics sector in the Chennai region.”

The report said that with construction of an arterial road network connecting Nemilichery, Nallur and Minjur, and the proposal of the Bangalore-Chennai Expressway, more than 130,215 incremental jobs will be added in the road freight sector.

Owing to economic growth and evolving regulation, rising outsourcing, high infrastructure investment and easier customer clearance, air freight will add 40,000 incremental jobs.

The report added that expansion of the Chennai metro corridor from Washermanpet to Chennai central station and Chennai airport will create opportunities and thousands of jobs across all subsectors of logistics in the Chennai region.

Creation of multimodal logistics parks and logistics clusters to enhance freight transport and reduce costs and time by improving the tracking and traceability of consignments will transform the aging warehousing and courier sub-sector, the report said.

By Jagdish Kumar

India Correspondent | Mumbai