India To Continue Its Planned Development Of Chabahar Port In Spite Of USA Iran Tiffs
In the budget for 2020-21 announced on 01 Feb2020, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has earmarked Rs17,372.27 crore for the Indian foreign ministry, marginally higher than what was allocated in the 2019-20 budget in which the ministry was allocated Rs17,346.71 crore. The reduction in budget outlay was most significant for Nepal, where the reduction has been Rs400 crore – from Rs1,200 crore in the 2019-20 budget to Rs800 crore in the 2020-21 budget.
India has signaled its intent to press ahead with development of the Chabahar port in Iran with the allocation of Rs100 crore in the budget of the Indian foreign ministry. The port is of strategic significance to India given that New Delhi sees it as the route to access landlocked Afghanistan and Central Asia by passing Pakistan.
In the case of Chabahar, the allocation has gone up by Rs55 crore from Rs45 crore in the 2019-20 budget. This comes more than two months after the US gave in a writing that it would help facilitate global banks to fund the purchase of equipment at Chabahar port — during the Indo-US “2+2″ meeting of foreign and defence ministers in Washington in December. The US had then included a confirmation that it will not interfere or object to the development of the Chabahar port and a rail link provided there was no involvement of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Analysts in New Delhi say the allocation of resources for Chabahar port is a signal to both Iran and Afghanistan that India is committed to the project first agreed to in 2003.
Getting Indian private companies to undertake any activity at Chabahar has been a non-starter given that Indian firms have been nervous of US interference despite assurances that India had received from the US on developing the Iranian port.
Besides Chabahar, the government has also increased allocation for the port project in Iran and Rs140 crore to Seychelles where it has been keen to develop a coast guard facility. An agreement to this effect was signed in 2015 during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the archipelago nation but internal political differences in the Seychelles have resulted in the project slowing down. The 2015 pact was seen as important in the context of India underlining its presence in the Indian Ocean region against the backdrop of China increasing its profile in the region considered India’s backyard.
