India's maritime infrastructure receives $1 billion investment from DP World

Considered as one of the leading global operators of marine and inland terminals DP World pledged USD 1 billion investment in India in order to tap into the opportunities the country offers in infrastructure space.

"We are very excited about the opportunities in India. We are not constrained for capital given the right commercial and economic dynamics," says CEO Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem.

The operator is looking at several investments in India in the logistic sector and online transactions of customs services. "Our expertise can help India grow faster in this space as millions of tonnes of wheat and thousands of tonnes of fruits and vegetables get wasted here in want of warehousing and storage," Sulayem said.

He also confessed that teh company wants to become one of the major contributors in partnership with the government to achieve the objectives of lowering logistics cost in India.

The supply chain has lots of inefficiencies here and farmers are not able to preserve their crops with half of it going wasted.

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"We have expertise in logistics. We have done it throughout the world so we are excited to join hands with government to invest in this opportunity. It will involve policy, procedure, IT hardware, warehouses," he said.

He earlier had made comaprison between India and China saying that both the economies had maximum population but there is a huge difference in the amount of cargo handled in both the countries."While China handles 100 million container cargo, India handles barely 10 million," he said.

DP World can help India augment its marine infrastructure as it has helped Dubai, he added. He said Dubai has made its custom clearance processes online and around 10,000 transactions are completed in 100 days.

Traders in Dubai do not have to step out of their offices for any kind of custom clearances and everything is done online, he said. Being one of the strongest emerging economies in the world, it offers immense potential for growth in maritime and inland trade, Sulayem added.

He said that free trade zone in Dubai contributed 25 per cent of the countrys GDP and DP World was expert in developing industrial parks and had developed a logistics park in UK and was ready to do the same here.

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It has already made contribution in the development of five international gateway ports in India, also it needs to reach internal markets, invest cold storage facilities and networks as well as using coastal and inland waterways to increase efficiencies and lower costs.

This deal would lead to direct economic impact benefiting manufacturing and agriculture sectors as well.