New Delhi, Aug 14 (IANS) The plan for an India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), presented at the G20 summit in New Delhi in 2023, is widely seen as the democratic world’s answer to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, according to an article published by Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Envisioned as a network of ports, railways, energy infrastructure, fiber-optic cables and logistics links connecting India to Europe through the Gulf and Israel, the original vision was elegantly simple. Goods would move from India across the Arabian Peninsula, through Saudi Arabia and Jordan, into Israel and onward through Haifa to Europe, bypassing both dangerous maritime bottlenecks and unstable countries such as Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, the article points out.

The article further states that while the Middle East conflict has put the IMEC project in cold storage, the disruption to maritime trade in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea have also made it more urgently needed by all parties.

The article highlights that if IMEC succeeds with Israel at its centre, the country’s Haifa port could evolve into the eastern Mediterranean’s principal logistics hub, while Israel’s strengths in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, semiconductors, desalination and energy technology would become integrated into supply chains stretching from Bengaluru to Berlin.

The corridor would export not only goods through Israel, but Israeli services, innovation and capital, says the article.

It underscores that India is emerging as the world’s principal engine of economic growth. Europe, increasingly wary of its reliance on Russia since it invaded Ukraine in 2022, is trying to diversify critical economic and energy relationships. And governments increasingly view supply chains not merely as instruments of commerce, but as matters of national security.

The article also highlights recent studies which estimate that a completed corridor could reduce transit times between India and Europe by as much as 40 per cent while cutting logistics costs by roughly 30 per cent, lowering the cost of shipping a standard container to roughly $4,200 from around $6,000.

This would save approximately $2.7 billion every year in freight costs alone even at modest volumes of 1.5 million containers annually apart from creating an ecosystem for new businesses to thrive, the article added.

--IANS

sps/na