Impacts of the Belt and Road Initiative in the Indian subcontinent under future port development scenarios

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is twofold: the first is to assess the extent to which current port development initiatives contribute to securing the status of the Port of Colombo as a regional transshipment (T/S) hub to serve the Indian subcontinent; and the second is to generate plausible future development scenarios for the maritime industry in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). A scenario analysis method is applied to examine the past trends and to build future development scenarios. The results showed that major Indian ports have experienced a significant growth in cargo volumes and vessel traffic. South and East Indian coastal ports continue to use the Port of Colombo as a T/S port in tandem with the corridors connected to the Indian Ocean. Scenario analysis highlights the growing importance of BRI-centric land-based economic corridors, which would generate a large amount of cargos from hinterlands up to China. This would be further fueled through the Great Mekong region-driven industrialization, which would add to the west-bound maritime cargo volume. The paper concludes that the increased capital influx from China would more likely to result in a substantial development of the present port and road/rail infrastructure in Sri Lanka.

KEYWORDS:

• Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
• port infrastructure development
• Indian subcontinent
• Sri Lanka
• scenario analysis
• container shipping
• China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Global Research Network program through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea [NRF-2017S1A2A2041812].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Global Research Network program through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea [NRF-2017S1A2A2041812].