Andhra Pradesh’s central location within India, its strong transportation links with other parts of the country and the access it provides into India make it a suitable location for a distribution and logistics hub. By 2020, Andhra Pradesh will be the distribution and logistics centre of choice for companies wanting to move goods within India as well as to and from India. In future it is aspiring to match the logistical capabilities of global hubs such as Holland and Singapore and be the benchmark hub in India. The ingredients for making the sunrise state into a logistics hub already exist – the state has good rail and road linkages to other parts in India, it has a combination of government-owned and private ports at strategic locations, particularly considering the growing trade with South East Asia. This makes Andhra Pradesh a natural gateway to East & Southeast Asia. In fact, the government’s New Industrial Policy has been formulated to make Andhra Pradesh the most preferred global logistics hub and India’s gateway to East and South East Asia by 2029.
The state has 974km long coastline, which is second longest in the country and dotted by some of the deep seaports in India including Visakhapatnam, Krishnapatnam, Gangavaram seaports, making it strategically positioned to benefit from port-led development.
Building on these strategic advantages the state government has planned to ready a Greenfield seaport at Machilipatnam by 2022. The largest port on the east coast – Krishnapatnam Port is already pioneering in moving transhipment cargo in the Bay of Bengal and has emerged as the gateway to surrounding hinterland.
Sensing these logistics advantages industrial giants are making a beeline into the state: Kia Motors has set up its first mega manufacturing plant at Yerramanchi village of Anantapur district, while Chittoor District is being developed as an automobile hub. The Chief Minister is determined to develop Visakhapatnam as software destination, Tirupati as hardware destination and Rayalaseema as automobile destination. This massive industrial development cannot proceed without availability of adequate and efficient logistics infrastructure. Andhra Pradesh has the unique distinction of being the only state in India being part of two of the three major industrial corridors (VCIC and CBIC) presently under implementation in the country. The need of the hour is to map the cargo generation centres and plan logistics infrastructure development to ensure swift movement of cargo. The need of the hour is to provide seamless connectivity to industrial clusters, rather than logistics playing the catch-up game which can slow down the industrial growth in the state.