‘India needs widebody freighters covering Europe & US’

Tushar Jani, Group Chairman, Cargo Service Center shares his expectations from the upcoming budget 2023-2024, and says, “I think the first thing itself, is the Prime Minister declaring National Logistics Policy and with Gati Shakti Program, it is very clear that the government is focusing on logistics. In fact the world is focusing on the supply chain and India cannot be in isolation. With the world supply chain now taking the center stage, India is going to be a global supplier for so many things. For example iPhone, now its third factory coming in, and Pharma, which is world’s generic drug, 20% is supplied by India. We are a world pharmacy and in that respect, I think we are a sunrise industry. India is probably the only country which is growing above 6% in GDP in time to come. That itself is good news and that will need an efficient, and resilient logistic supply chain. Having said that, it needs a lot of support. Just to start with GST, which is now put in for 18% on the air freight and the argument from the government is that the stakeholders can claim reimbursement later. My point is it should be rationalized and should be a lower percentage so at least the cash flow is not impacted for exporter importer as well as for the forwarding and logistic company. I think the government should take that first step. The second step is, of course, the very old demand of the aviation turbine fuel which is still very high and it should be rationalized that will help bring more air freight operators in civil aviation in terms of air freight airline to come in. Third is the conductive policy on e-commerce cross-border logistics which is going to be huge in the coming years. India has not even touched little bit of global e-commerce and India has a big potential for global e-commerce both inward and outward. So the government should set up the correct processes, and make the process flow easy as e-commerce cross borders will help a lot of MSMEs, lot of self-propelled entrepreneurs to come up and reach the global market. This is the time India should take centre stage. So I always say it’s time for India is not what we will get but what we are asking to get. So for cross border eCommerce, the government must give a lot of attention, set up an expert group, figure out and build infrastructure, build processes, put tech structure proper, and keep custom procedures very simple so we can grow in that segment. And last, of course, the current EXIM process, if the passenger comes to the airport say for 2-3 hours why cargo should be at the airport for more than 38 40 hours. So we must have those processes conducive to allowing cargo to go fast which will improve throughput which will include our export import. Our cost will be rationalized and last very important country needs a widebody freighter airline going from India into Europe and US. The time has come and government must encourage private enterprises to come forward and do it. These are my simple conclusion for this budget.”