A US$12.4 billion plan to upgrade India's ports to keep pace with economic expansion promised much, but in three years there has been little progress beyond initial announcements and private firms are opting to build their own.
It takes India's state-run ports four times as long as rivals elsewhere in Asia to unload and reload container ships, and improvements are being held back by poor planning, red tape and bureaucracy.
Bids for an offshore container terminal for Mumbai Port, for example, were submitted in 2005 but the project only got the go-ahead in August. There is no completion date.
'If this is the pace of creating the infrastructure, then we are definitely going to face a situation where trade will have to suffer, or will suffer on account of non-availability of infrastructure,' said Atul Kulkarni, senior manager at consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India.
India's ports are already at breaking point - port officials say capacity needs to be increased by 130 per cent to meet an expected doubling in shipments to 1.2 billion tonnes over the next five years - and delays could put a brake on economic growth, which has averaged 8.6 per cent over the past three years.
Citigroup estimates the volume of shipments at the 12 main ports, which handle about 75 per cent of cargo shipments, has grown 9.5 per cent a year over the past three years.
Those 12 government ports handled 464 million tonnes of cargo in the fiscal year to end-March - the same as Singapore.
Ships at the ports have to wait one day before berthing and it then takes 31/2 days to unload and load them, Citigroup says.
There are about 60 other active ports in India, which handled about 150 million tonnes of cargo in 2006-2007.
Beyond the ports, road and rail systems are deficient. Poor links raise transport costs to 8-9 per cent of total shipping costs, compared with 3-4 per cent in developed countries.
Shallow port drafts, antiquated coastal regulation laws, the complex process of getting expansion approval plus overlapping federal and state government responsibilities add to the difficulties.
The average draft is 14.5m, but the biggest container port, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust on the edge of Mumbai, has an average 12.5m draft, which limits it to ships with a capacity of 4,500 containers.
That is much shallower than neighbouring rivals, such as Colombo's 18.5m, which can comfortably handle new-generation ships carrying well over 6,000 containers.
As a result, large container ships bound for India have to be routed via ports where they can be broken down into smaller cargoes, increasing transportation costs and travel time.
'We have a terribly congested transport network,' said Ishwar Achanta, a member of Vishakhapatnam Port Trust, India's biggest port. 'We need divine intervention.'
To get round the delays, international and local firms are building their own port facilities - sometimes adjacent to state-run ports, which could create even more problems if a number of ports compete for the same road and rail networks.
It takes India's state-run ports four times as long as rivals elsewhere in Asia to unload and reload container ships, and improvements are being held back by poor planning, red tape and bureaucracy.
Bids for an offshore container terminal for Mumbai Port, for example, were submitted in 2005 but the project only got the go-ahead in August. There is no completion date.
'If this is the pace of creating the infrastructure, then we are definitely going to face a situation where trade will have to suffer, or will suffer on account of non-availability of infrastructure,' said Atul Kulkarni, senior manager at consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India.
India's ports are already at breaking point - port officials say capacity needs to be increased by 130 per cent to meet an expected doubling in shipments to 1.2 billion tonnes over the next five years - and delays could put a brake on economic growth, which has averaged 8.6 per cent over the past three years.
Citigroup estimates the volume of shipments at the 12 main ports, which handle about 75 per cent of cargo shipments, has grown 9.5 per cent a year over the past three years.
Those 12 government ports handled 464 million tonnes of cargo in the fiscal year to end-March - the same as Singapore.
Ships at the ports have to wait one day before berthing and it then takes 31/2 days to unload and load them, Citigroup says.
There are about 60 other active ports in India, which handled about 150 million tonnes of cargo in 2006-2007.
Beyond the ports, road and rail systems are deficient. Poor links raise transport costs to 8-9 per cent of total shipping costs, compared with 3-4 per cent in developed countries.
Shallow port drafts, antiquated coastal regulation laws, the complex process of getting expansion approval plus overlapping federal and state government responsibilities add to the difficulties.
The average draft is 14.5m, but the biggest container port, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust on the edge of Mumbai, has an average 12.5m draft, which limits it to ships with a capacity of 4,500 containers.
That is much shallower than neighbouring rivals, such as Colombo's 18.5m, which can comfortably handle new-generation ships carrying well over 6,000 containers.
As a result, large container ships bound for India have to be routed via ports where they can be broken down into smaller cargoes, increasing transportation costs and travel time.
'We have a terribly congested transport network,' said Ishwar Achanta, a member of Vishakhapatnam Port Trust, India's biggest port. 'We need divine intervention.'
To get round the delays, international and local firms are building their own port facilities - sometimes adjacent to state-run ports, which could create even more problems if a number of ports compete for the same road and rail networks.