DEPUTY Minister for Transport and Communications U Aung Kyaw Tun, who is currently in India, attended the Fortifying Global Supply Chains event organized by the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority on 28 October, together with India’s Minister of State of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Shri Shantanu Thakur.
The event, aimed at strengthening India’s strategic position as a global logistics and manufacturing hub by enhancing maritime trade infrastructure, streamlining processes, and improving multi-sector connectivity, opened with remarks from the Indian Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways.
The deputy minister delivered a speech emphasizing that the event’s theme, ‘Logistics Reinvented’, is an essential issue, highlighting that strong supply chains underpin economic growth and prosperity, and noting Myanmar’s strategic location at the crossroads of South and Southeast Asia – with its extensive coastline along the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea serving as a vital maritime link that facilitates trade between India’s eastern seaboard and ASEAN countries such as Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, thereby reducing transportation time and costs.
The deputy minister stated that the Sittway Port and Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport Project, jointly implemented by Myanmar and India, serves as a key route linking India’s eastern ports with its landlocked northeastern states through Myanmar, establishing Sittway as a major maritime gateway and new economic corridor, while the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway provides a direct land route to ASEAN, adding that future efforts will focus on modernizing domestic logistics and ports, implementing single-window systems and digital platforms, encouraging private sector participation, and promoting human resource development and technology transfer to build an efficient, cost-effective, and mutually beneficial logistics ecosystem.
The deputy minister then attended the signing ceremony of MOUs between departments and organizations under the Ministry of State of Ports, Shipping and Waterways and private companies for the development of India’s maritime sector.
After the ceremony, a bilateral meeting was held with the Indian officials led by the Minister of Ministry of State of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, to discuss the bilateral coastal shipping agreement and its standard operating procedures, the Memorandum of Understanding on seafarer training and certificate recognition, model demonstration-based training and assessment systems for seafarers, a long-range tracking and surveillance system for ships, and matters related to protection and compensation insurance for Myanmar-registered vessels entering India. — MNA/TH
