Explained: Why India Is Building A Container Transshipment Port In Andaman And Nicobar Islands

• Poor infrastructure at India’s ports, coupled with the lack of deep drafts, has plagued maritime logistics for decades.
• This has begun to change recently, but the lack of a transshipment hub in the country continues to hurt competitiveness.

In August 2020, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the 2,312-km-long submarine optic fibre cable linking Chennai and Port Blair to provide faster, cheaper and more reliable internet and communication services to Andaman and Nicobar (A&N) Islands, he announced that the government was looking at a proposal to develop a transshipment port in the territory.

A major part of his speech focused on maritime trade and port-led development, and was peppered with words like connectivity, global supply chain, ease of doing business, and most importantly, maritime logistics.

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