India’s Lockdown phase.

The Government of India is being very preemptive in approach to deal with deadly virus covid 19 , so in that direction India had come up with 21 days lock down with a first phase on March 24 , which has come into action on the same day without any delay and later on in second phase it has been extended till 3rd of may.India has a population of about 1.3 bn which is one fifth of the world’s population and having so large coastline it has very extensive transportation through seas . In past ,Maritime Industry is majorly hit by trade wars , high tariffs and the natural disaster that blown up Kerala coast in 2019 .

SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTION

India is vastly a source of many essential commodities in which few of them are wheat and medicines and due to immense pressure their is a surge in demand side globally . The continuous lock-downs have uprooted the global supply chain .According to the census when the lockdowns had been carried out, at that time about 543 ships with more than 100000 seafarers were stranded in the middle of their voyages .Inventory Management system that fully depends upon the timely arrival of ships have been now jammed without keeping the costs minimized.

SHIP BREAKING AND LABOR SUPPLY

India and it neighbors are most favorable destination for recruiting the labors for ship breaking industry but due to covid19 no activities are taking place and moreover labors are merely going out of their places ,as a result whole process got halted. India is also significantly impacted in crew management area , due to which shipowners are grappling with input output cost variance whose impact can be clearly seen over box type ships.

PORT CLOSURES

India is a major epicenter for the delivery of goods through big name companies such as Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd which is known for their logistics and shipping . As per the report there was plummeting drop in cargo volumes of Hapag-Lloyd at Indian Ports from February due to drastically decrease in turnaround times .India’s sea trade in a grim situation has totally averted the situation for which the disturbances in domestic and supply lines is a major reason.

Government of India stringently put the detention charges for all the arriving shipments during this period of uncertainty due which shipping companies had to further bear the brunt with loading and unloading issues looming.This along with the combination of labor shortages has led to further delays with spurring voyage time.

Oil Crash Impact

Covid19 outbreak has put the demand of oil in severe strain due to which Indian Oil Corporation had reduced its oil processing by 30%, but India’s stance to taken an advantage of plummeting oil prices is very weak as it has limited storage capacity .As per the reports of S&P there is a negative growth for India’ oil demand in 2020.

what will be the future ?

Shipping Ecosystem as a whole got disrupted and the way out of it is only be possible if the containment of this deadly virus got positively achieved but till that time as a force majeure declared by all the Indian ports with only essential services can take place through that India needs to slowly revive its supply chain. As the government has planned to eased the restriction from April 20 the ports can load and unload cargo and goods across any ports in India, working very actively India shipping has come up with SOP for the sign on /sign off. Authorities and Ministry of shipping by putting their utmost care and expertise, can expect other operations will also resume very soon . At last we will definitely win against this pandemic by putting the best practices in place.

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Amit Kumar, an ex Merchant Mariner is founder and CEO of Sea and Coast Maritime Magazine.