2 min readFeb 2, 2026 06:39 AM IST
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her Union Budget speech on Sunday, announced a Rs 10,000 crore container manufacturing scheme amid a shortage of shipping containers in India that leads to dependency on China.
The renewed focus on containers comes after Covid-19 and the Red Sea crisis brought to the fore India’s dependency on other countries.
China is the largest exporter of containers and manufactures up to 95 per cent of these boxes, globally. Much of these containers are being manufactured in China by a handful of highly subsidised state-owned enterprises, which have sparked security concerns in the US, EU, and India. The US also initiated plans to de-risk its ports from over-reliance on Chinese containers and cranes. India also began manufacturing containers after 2021.
Due to the Red Sea crisis, the dwell time of container ships increased by nearly a week to 10 days as traders began taking the Cape of Good Hope route. While the Red Sea route is now resuming normally, shipping rates for the better part of last year remained elevated. Exporters said that Indian exporters were being arm-twisted into paying higher rates as India did not have a shipping line of global repute.
In 2024, global shipping lines were seeing their profits soar. Danish company Maersk, seen as a barometer of world trade, in 2024 raised its profit forecast three times, citing higher freight rates. “Shipping costs peaked in July 2024 to levels last seen in 2022 but declined rapidly thereafter. By September, they had fallen by almost 40 per cent from July 2024, returning to January 2024 rates, although they remained more than twice as high as at the end of 2023,’ the World Bank had said following the Red Sea crisis.
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