India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said in a recent radio address that a new transport corridor project has been announced on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Delhi, which will form the basis of global trade for hundreds of years to come. But can it really happen as Prime Minister Modi has said?
U.S. President Joe Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have announced the India, Middle East, Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) over the past year, improving and strengthening their frosty relations. US President Biden once expressed his determination to isolate Saudi Arabia globally.)
“Simply put, this is a project that promotes American interests against China.”
Parag Khanna, author of ‘Connectiography’, says that there is no material benefit for the US to be a part of this project, but it can be seen in the same category as the Japan-South Korea summit at Camp David.
The US has signaled its diplomatic presence by easing relations between the two key Pacific nations in the face of China’s growing influence.
The IMEC Corridor project is also seen by many as a U.S. rival to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global infrastructure project that will push China to the south. It connects East Asia, Central Asia, Russia and Europe.
Is it right to compare IMEC with China’s Corridor Project?
This year, it has been ten years since the launch of the China Corridor Project announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Some say the plan’s grand ambitions have been significantly scaled back, as lending to projects has slowed amid China’s economic slowdown. Countries such as Italy are expressing their desire to exit the plan, and nations such as Sri Lanka and Zambia have found themselves in a debt trap that is now unable to meet their debt repayment obligations.
In a recent paper, Girish Lathra, a fellow at the Observer Research Foundation think tank, wrote that China’s BRI project has also been criticized for a number of other reasons, including its ‘strategic influence through development projects’. The main objectives of Aggressive annexation of various regions to China, insufficient attention to local needs of these countries, lack of transparency, disregard for the sovereignty of countries, negative environmental impacts, corruption and lack of proper financial oversight.
Agarwal Khanna says that despite all the difficulties and problems, China has achieved ‘amazing success’ and IMEC is not even close to being its ‘rival’.
“It could be a moderate corridor project at most,” he added.
China started the BRI project a decade ago and in July this year, the total investment under this project has exceeded one trillion dollars. More than 150 countries have joined the project as partners. As Girish Lathra writes, China has clearly expanded its geographic reach from ‘regional to global’.
The India-Middle East and Europe Corridor (IMEC) project is not the first attempt by developed Western countries to counter China’s growing influence.
The G7 countries and the US launched the Global Infrastructure and Investment Partnership in 2022, which aims to mobilize $600 billion in global infrastructure projects by 2027. The project was named Global Gateway and is considered the EU’s response to the BRI.
Although these projects do not compete with the ambition or scale of China’s BRI project.
However, the fact that the last five years have seen an increase in these projects in response to China’s initiative is proof that the BRI has emerged as a ‘global economic force,’ says Agrawal Khanna.
Some analysts argue that IMEC should not be viewed through the lens of opposition to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and suggest that doing so may not be counterproductive.
The establishment of IMEC will further promote the trend of trade partnerships where countries can expand cooperation with multiple partners simultaneously. “These days most countries join multiple forums and alliances,” says Professor Ravinder Kaur of the University of Copenhagen.
The details of the plan are important
The details of the project are scarce in IMEC’s memorandum of understanding, but an action plan is expected in the next 60 days. From the information so far, this appears to be a possible geographic corridor project.
It will be very complicated to complete. Agarwal Khanna says, “I want to see the main government agencies in this project who will sign for the investment, how much time the government of each country recruits for this investment.”
He further says that ‘under this plan, a new customs and trade rules will also need to be implemented to harmonize the paperwork for mutual trade.’
He gave the example of the Trans-Eurasian Railway, which passes through 30 countries including Kazakhstan, and said that the transit is without any obstacles. You only need clearance at the start and end of the journey. We don’t have that in IMEC.
There are also the obvious geopolitical complexities of building relationships with partner countries such as the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia that are often not apparent. Experts say it won’t take long for this type of tactical cooperation to deteriorate.
The IMEC project will also be opposite the Suez Canal, the maritime trade route used for trade between Mumbai and Europe, a waterway in Egypt.
Economist Swaminathan Iyer wrote in his column for The Times of India that ‘To some extent, the IMEC Corridor project will improve our relations with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but it will harm relations with Egypt. will.’
Nathan Eyre adds that sea travel through the Suez Canal is also cheaper, faster and relatively less difficult. “This plan may be politically sound, but it goes against all the principles of transport economics.”
Navdeep Puri, a former Indian diplomat to the UAE, has pointed out in a column in The National News that the project’s ambitions go beyond the narrow scope of trade and economics based on discussions at security forums like the Quad. are to include everything from power grids to cyber security.
“If the lofty ambitions announced in New Delhi can become a reality, they will contribute to a safer, more livable world,” he writes. But for now we live with this hope.