HeinzGud
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So if the new Indian deep water ports comes into play, Sri Lanka will not be intergrated into Indian economy as you said.At the moment yes, we'll have to pay more to transship goods through Jebel Ali or Port Klang.Let me explain
The lack of a deep water port with more than a 15mt draft has hurt Indian exports and we have to transship goods through ports which can handle bigger ships.Simply putting it the depth of water at our ports restrict us to container vessels of less than 15000TEU. The problem is most large global lines use Ships larger than 18000TEU to keep costs low, Indian exporters hence ship goods to Sri Lanka, Singapore or Dubai first using ships of 10-12000 TEU and then unload and load these goods back on ships above 15000TEU in size. This increases both export & import costs.
Now that the problem why @HeinzGud is right has been explained let me tell you why he is wrong in the long term.
India has currently started construction of two Deep water ports with Vizingham in Kerala stated to have a more than a 20mt draft & Krishnapatnam in Andhra Pradesh having a 18.5mt draft. The development of both these ports had been stalled for the last two decades but now they are in full swing and shall be complete in the next five years.Once these are complete the Lankan ports will lose 70% of their business.
Moreover, Sri Lanka has foreseen the future trends and started the H'tota harbor project with China. That project was originally given to India but turned down. With the H'tota port Sri Lanka could start services ships in the busy shipping lane runs closer to H'tota.