India has taken steps to provide relief to the exporters facing global container shortages, including giving priority to containers basis the efficiency of the movement.

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Once stuffed, containers would be moved on priority on the basis of efficiency in the movement to the port to find a vessel at the earlier for better turnaround time, the Centre said in a statement.

Disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in high shipping freight rates and a global container shortage. "A lot of empty containers are being repositioned into India, but they are not sufficient for our export volumes because imports have come down," V Kalyana Rama, CMD of Container Corporation of India (CONCOR) told CNBC-TV18.

Originally, we used to have more imports and lesser exports. But this time because imports have come down and exports picked up there is an imbalance on the export side now.

"I think the disruptions happening on the China-US routes, which some reports today say there are many ships waiting at China, these things are causing a lot of effect on our export volumes as well as the empty container repositioning into India," he said.

Kalyan Rama thinks this shortage will continue till the end of this financial year. "So there will be continuous shortage among exporters and then a lot of demand for the export containers," he added.

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(Edited by : Yashi Gupta)