Indian media has given a greater insight into what Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hopes to achieve during his upcoming visit to Greece after attending the BRICS summit in South Africa at the end of this month.
"Prime Minister Narendra Modi will also visit Greece as India aims to explore the utilisation of its Piraeus port instead of the Chabahar port to send its shipments to Europe faster," reported The Tribune.
This suggests that the unresolved conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, where India's trade corridor from Iran's Chabahar port was to pass through to reach European markets, deterred New Delhi's decision-makers and made them look towards Greece.
What makes this all the more interesting though is the fact that the Port of Piraeus is majority owned by China COSCO Shipping, which as of 2020, had a 67% stake of shares (16% in escrow shares).
"The PM’s visit to Greece is a part of India’s increasing engagements with Mediterranean countries in a wide range of areas, including security and defence," The Tribune report added.
India’s path to the Mediterranean countries opened up after the UAE’s normalisation with Israel and the formation of the I2U2 (India-Israel-the US- the UAE) economic grouping. This means that India could send the goods to either port at the UAE or the Adani-owned Haifa port in Israel, from where they can go to the Piraeus trans-shipment complex.
“India’s Arabian-Mediterranean (Arab-Med) Corridor to Europe is an emerging multi-modal, commercial corridor that could radically reconfigure trade patterns between the Indian Ocean Region, the Middle East and Europe by creating an arc of commercial connectivity. It would span Eurasia’s southern rim from India’s Arabian Sea coast to Greece’s eastern Mediterranean coast. For India, this new connectivity constitutes a strategic paradigm shift of enormous geopolitical consequence that could reshape its role in the Eurasian economic order,” noted a paper by Micheal Manchum for the National University of Singapore. “The India-to-Europe Arab-Med Corridor forms an alternative trans-regional commercial transportation route to the troubled Chabahar-based transit corridor,” he added.
READ MORE: Turks targeted celebrations at Sumela Monastery for political reasons.
