New Delhi: The Commerce Ministry has called a high-level inter-ministerial meet next week to discuss ways to insulate India’s trade from the ongoing problems in the Red Sea, a senior official said on Thursday.
Senior officials from five ministries — external affairs, defence, shipping and finance and commerce — will participate in the deliberations.
The commerce ministry has also set up an internal strategic group, comprising additional secretaries of the ministry, to discuss global issues impacting the country’s trade on a daily basis and prepare a strategy to deal with them.
“The idea of the inter-ministerial meeting is to see how we can strategise our trade so that it gets least affected in such a situation,” the official said.
The situation around the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, a crucial shipping route connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean, has escalated due to recent attacks by Yemen-based Houthi militants.
Due to these attacks, the shippers are taking consignments through the Cape of Good Hope, resulting in delays of almost 14 days and also higher freight and insurance costs.
The issues being faced by the stakeholders concerned were discussed at a high-level meeting in the commerce ministry on January 4.
Stakeholders, including traders, shippers, container firms and freight forwarders were there at the meeting.
“We are doing this inter-ministerial consultation meet based on that stakeholder consultation meeting about what measures can be taken to deal with the problem,” the official said. The stakeholders have stated that freight and insurance costs have increased as they have to take a long route now and due to that, the turnaround time has increased.