The logistics sector is struggling with around 9,000 container ships stranded across ports in Europe and West Asia, according to reports. With the Russia-Ukraine conflict continuing and lockdowns in several Chinese cities owing to COVID-19 concerns, the situation doesn't seem to be resolving anytime soon.

Lockdowns in China have a big role to play in this.

“About 20 percent of the world's – roughly 9,000 active container ships - are now stuck in traffic jams outside congested ports and 30 percent of that backlog alone is in China,” said VS Parthasarathy, Vice Chairman at Allcargo Group in an interview to CNBC-TV18.

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The number of ships waiting to load or unload has almost doubled compared to February, he added.

Sunil K Vaswani, Executive Director at Container Shipping Lines Association (India) echoed this adding that “Imports into India are getting delayed by about 2-3 weeks,” he said.

The silver lining

With exports from China getting impacted, there is an opportunity for the Indian exporters to tap.

"There is more space for vessels from India, particularly on the US west coast and to Latin America west coast. So that gives greater opportunity for the Indian trade," said Vaswani.

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For the full interview, watch the accompanying video

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