The route connecting Vladivostok and Chennai sails across the Sea of Japan, the South China Sea, the Strait of Malacca, and then emerges into the Bay of Bengal and finally cuts across through the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago to Chennai. This will reduce the transport time to 12 days, saving more than two third of the time taken by existing route covering a distance of approximately 5,647 nautical miles (10,500 km). Simultaneously, costs are expected to be cut by 30 percent.
India’s trade data reflects an increasing trend of trade between India and Russia rising from 8.1 billion USD in FY in 2021 to 39.8 billion USD in FY 2023. However, the reality behind the rise is the growing trade deficit i.e the imports from Russia are manyfolds higher than the exports from India.This new channel will attempt to tilt the balance favorably in India’s favor and will further provide access to the South-East Asian region, including countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Mongolia, South Korea, Philippines and Indonesia tapping resources like metallurgical coal, crude oil and Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) in Russia and explore export opportunities of construction equipment, construction materials, pharma products from the Indian market, unlocking huge trade potential in the blue economy.