A second round of meeting of Air Cargo Logistic Promotion Board would be held “very shortly” to address inter-ministerial issues and to coordinate with the state governments on handling of air cargo, a senior civil aviation official said today.
The first meeting of the board, chaired by Civil Aviation Secretary, discussed in detail several areas of concern relating to air cargo, especially the missing and non-traceable cargo in domestic airports, Economic Adviser to Ministry of Civil Aviation, M Kannan said today.
“We will be having the next meeting of the board very shortly. There has been some delay in the second meeting. It is primarily to resolve inter-ministerial issues and to have co-ordinations with State governments ”, he said at an interactive session on Aviation cargo industry, organised by SICCI and Chennai Customs House Agents Association.
“Missing and non—traceable cargo, generated the maximum discussion. We were given evidences that in some of the international forum, India was shown in a very poor light”, he said noting that high value cargo gets stolen from the cargo complex itself.
Besides this issue, he said, some of the key challenges the air cargo industry were the infrastructure bottlenecks, regulatory hurdles and issues related to automation of the industry.
Observing that India should be the transhipment cargo hub between the East and Western parts of the world, he said, not even five per cent of (international) cargo is managed in India. “In most of the international airports, 85 per cent of them are transhipment cargo”, he said.
Stating that there has to be a strong need for rationalising existing space available in airports, he said, “even at the Chennai Airport, lot of space lie unused. There has to be priority planning in allocation of spaces. Every airport must have unique cargo model.”