India Port Capacity Hits 2.8B Tonnes, Logistics Gaps Persist

03 Nov 2026, 08:49 by Vinay Kakkad · KalingaTV

New Delhi: Even as Indian seaports add berths and clear paperwork faster than ever, freight is stalling just past the gate.

A joint study released by FICCI and Kearney reveals that while customs clearance times have dropped sharply, systemic post-clearance snarls and inland friction continue to drag down national trade performance.

Data from the 2025 National Time Release Study across four major maritime gateways tells the story: securing export approvals took an average of 30 hours, yet cargo sat for another 158 hours before the ship actually sailed. That post-clearance window ate up 84 per cent of the entire outbound journey. At the Jawaharlal Nehru Custom House, official processing averaged just two hours and 12 minutes in 2026, yet total export cycles still dragged past eight days.

The authors noted that this gap reflects broader supply chain scheduling and physical logistics rather than mere administrative inertia, emphasizing that real progress now hinges on coordinated handoffs outside the terminal gates.

Physical port capacity is not the bottleneck.

Between 2017-18 and the present, annual handling capacity across the country rose 22 per cent, expanding from 2.3 billion tonnes to 2.8 billion tonnes. Actual cargo moved across both major and non-major facilities climbed 38 per cent, up from 1,209 million tonnes to 1,668 million tonnes. Capacity utilisation rose from 52 per cent to 59 per cent, leaving substantial headroom for volume growth.

Quayside operations have kept pace. Average vessel turnaround times at major ports fell 18 per cent to roughly 49 hours. Furthermore, Mundra, Pipavav, and the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority (JNPA) secured positions among the world’s top 30 maritime hubs in the World Bank’s Container Port Performance Index 2025.

Private sector participation has also anchored this expansion. Governed by the Major Port Authorities Act, 2021, private terminal operators already handle roughly two-thirds of major port traffic, with policy targets aiming to push that share to 85 per cent by 2030.

Yet the report argues that future growth will depend less on quayside machinery and concrete berths than on the transport corridors, freight networks, and industrial connections linking ports to domestic markets.

Hinterland infrastructure remains an unfinished priority. Out of 294 targeted rail and highway link projects, only 84 had crossed the finish line by July 2026. A critical milestone arrived in March 2026, when the 1,506-kilometre Western Dedicated Freight Corridor connecting Dadri to JNPA entered full commercial operation.

Foreign transhipment exposure presents another structural hurdle. International hubs handled around 75 per cent of India’s transhipment containers as of May 2025. The launch of the deepwater Vizhinjam facility that same month added long-needed domestic draft capacity, but subsequent adjustments in container line route networks show that domestic transhipment hubs still face persistent commercial head.

To compete with premier global trade networks such as Singapore, Jebel Ali, Rotterdam, and the Shanghai-Ningbo cluster, the report advises the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways and state governments to move away from broad infrastructure planning. Instead, it urges authorities to map freight corridors directly to actual cargo flows, tailor plans specifically for container hubs, bulk energy terminals, and export routes, and appoint dedicated gateway coordinators to resolve multi-agency logjams in real time.

(Source: ANI)