Hammered by the blow of the pandemic, players in the logistics industry expect the upcoming Union Budget to provide relief to the recovering industry with an announcement of a working capital package for the sector.
The country’s logistics and supply chain industry also expects major investment announcements for infrastructure to boost the sector.
Avinash Raghav, CEO and MD of Shift Freight said that the Union Budget will zero in on the digital transformation of the logistics industry and the adoption of international standards.
“Another demand of our industry is increased investment in transportation modes, such as high-speed road, periodical vehicle passing system to carry a heavy load, single-window documentation to avoid inter-state border issues among others.”
~Avinash Raghav, CEO and MD of Shift Freight
He believes steps like these will play a pivotal role in reducing the level of air pollution caused due to transportation.
Ambrish Kumar, Founder of Zipaworld and Group CEO, AAA 2 Innovate Private Ltd believes that the government should increase the working capital package for the logistics sector multi-fold, which is currently “very minimal”.
“Logistics sector has suffered phenomenal losses during the pandemic and the working capital share from the government to this sector needs to be improved.”
~Ambrish Kumar, Founder of Zipaworld and Group CEO, AAA 2 Innovate Private Ltd
He also mentioned that the implementation of the National Logistics Policy introduced in the previous year’s Budget needs to speed up, keeping in mind that what the logistics sector has been subjected to, during the pandemic.
“We would expect this year’s Budget should allocate more towards improving the infrastructure in and around the airports and seaports and better road connectivity with all major ports which indirectly help to create a solid backbone of India’s logistics infrastructure.”
~Lancy Barboza, MD of Flomic Global Logistics Pvt Ltd
Apart from building infrastructure, Lancy Barboza is of the opinion that the Finance Minister should mull over announcing tax holidays and incentives for those setting up cold chain logistics of warehousing and temperature-controlled vehicles.
“This will also give a big boost to the emergency vaccine and pharma movements and also in reducing wastage in agro, horticulture, and dairy industry,” he said.
Narayan Ramamoorthy, Chief Revenue Officer, Global PayEX underlines the indomitable force that AI will prove to be, in digitising business-to-business (B2B) processes at scale, speed, costs, and productivity.
“Companies doing business in India have a tremendous opportunity to leverage AI across the B2B process flows right from purchase order (PO) to payments and reconciliation. Today, a lot of these processes are manual, hence inefficient both from a cost and time perspective. E-invoicing is a great first step by the Government of India.”
~Narayan Ramamoorthy, Chief Revenue Officer, Global PayEX
“The next step is to enable tracking payments. If payment data becomes available, AI can help track key metrics, such as Days Payments Outstanding (DPO) and Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) across receivables and payables and start providing actionable insights for companies and the economy as a whole,” he said, adding that it will also help address the issue of delayed payment for MSMEs, besides enabling digital lending through cash flow, payment, and invoice data”, Mr Ramamoorthy added.
