Is the Indian market boom being held back by a lack of infrastructure? That was the fi rst topic to be considered by an expert round table panel in the fi nal session of Air FreightAsia 2007.

Launching the discussion Jay Shelat, vice president cargo at Jet Airways, offered the gloomy view that infrastructure put India 25-30 years behind China, and said unions and the government were “working together toprevent progress”.

But he said that the only solution for an airline like Jet Airways was to work on the problems it could solve, such as improving service levels to customers.“It is no point beating ourselvesup about things we have no controlover,” he said.

Onno Boots, regional vice president Southeast Asia for TNT said poor infrastructure was “a severe challenge” in his company’s plans to build an integrated road and air network in India. Part of the solution was to acquire local companies who were already used to dealing with the situation on the ground, but he still predicted it would be a year or two until TNT’s network was up andrunning as planned.

Other problems identifi ed by panellists included slow Customs procedures, and a lack of adequate IT infrastructure. Kelvin Leung, chairman of the Hong Kong Air Freight Forwarders Association (HAFFA), said that better IT links between airport cargo facilities and Customs would produce a more immediate improvement in service than infrastructure upgrades, which couldtake a long time.

Rather surprisingly for a country generally understood to have a good level of English, Shelat highlighted the language barrier. “There are some very well qualifi ed people in India who can’t communicate with the rest of theworld,” he said.

Panel chairman and publisher of Payload Asia, Nol van Fenema, suggested that even if these peripheral problems were solved, poor airport infrastructure would still remain the key problem, however, andBoots was happy to concur.

“We all face the same challenges and we all have the same goals,” Boots said. “That is to get the infrastructure improved as fast as it can be.” Intervening from the fl oor, Frank Wade from property company AMB, also agreed that airport facilities remained the choke point.

AMB was about to enter the Indian market and build cargo facilities, but he also urged industry players to go to the government and get them to make air cargo infrastructure at airports a priority. “It is up to you to collectively make this happen,” he said.

Shelat said the concept of allowing a private company to buy airport land, build facilities, and then lease them to airlines was a good one. “There has been some advance on getting government approval for this, but there is still a long way to go,” he said.