Shankar Shinde, Chairman, FFFAI shares his views and expectations from the upcoming budget, he says, “Logistics is the backbone of the whole economy and when you talk about progress, nothing comes without logistics. We have seen that the government is placing more emphasis on this logistics development, infrastructure development, reducing dwell time and reducing the cost across the logistics sector. What we talk about, and that is where we envision that with this, we will have a lot of opportunities across the world bringing an alternative where we find presently China’s economy is being shaken, not stable.
We found that the European US sanctions are doing good for the Indian market to Russia and again the Ukraine-Russia war has given access to these Iranian sales across countries so there are a lot of opportunities which will come across and whenever there is an opportunity for the production it is always a logistics company which will take over. So we find that in the future there will be a big scope for the logistics into this industry, for the logisticians. Also digitalization has taken over, there is a disruption in the whole system with this technology. But it’s a good welcome move because when it comes to digitalization, we get a real study, the real things as to what is required for the government, what is required for the trade, to foresee the future aspects of promoting the products into the international market. So this is where we find and as far as the budget is concerned, investors with a lot of facilities which have been extended to the logistics sector. With Digitalization, the new platform coming up, there will be a big network to enhance this whole system.
Digital will play a very important role and we expect that there should be some role for the government to support this flourished industry in the way of subsidies. We are not asking for a direct subsidy but somewhere like relaxation on this forex where we earn in the logistics sector. So the earning of forex in the logistics sector is going to be a big boost for the government because reserves are the main concern and I think the government should look into its logistics to provide such a facility with the form of some licensing. So this is how we envision and look out for the future of logistics into this.”