MUMBAI (February 23, 2016) – Infrastructure problems in India must be dealt with before the country can be ready to fully realize its “Make In India” vision, according to a variety of players in the Indian air-cargo market.

“We have to recognize that the total supply chain in India connecting India to the world is not ready yet,” said Michael Steen, executive vice president and chief commercial officer of Atlas Air Worldwide, who was speaking at a discussion on the first day of the Air Cargo India 2016 conference. “There are small components that are ready, but there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to develop that supply chain so it can support the country domestically and internationally. The potential is fantastic. It’s huge and you can’t compare it with anywhere else in the world.”

Huned Gandhi, managing director of Dachser India, agreed, saying that India might not be completely ready, but that he could see a lot of intent and work being detailed in various areas of the supply chain.

“Yes, there are pockets that we really need to address and we need to prepare ourselves to be participating in the growth process,” said Gandhi. “We need to able to address this and benchmark it with other countries for the multinationals to prepare the same environment for their goods to reach the market. I can see that it is possible but there is work to be done for sure.”

One of the areas which needs to be improved, according to Air India, is airport facilities, particularly at airports other than in the five or six main metropolitan areas.

“The other airports, where we have a lot of potential, don’t even have warehouses,” said D. Murali, executive director and cargo coordinator at Air India. “There are no X-ray facilities which are very important for the cargo to clear security requirements. So there’s a lot of major infrastructure problems that we find and we’re not able to move cargo from these smaller airports and connect it to the major hubs.”

Murali added that there will be much more cargo movement if these regional airports are more well-developed.

[The full version of this story will be published in the March issue of Asia Cargo News.]