Ram Menen and Prakash Nair accept the award for Air Cargo Carrier of the Year from Dr SS Sidhu, governor of Manipur, India at ACI 2008.

Emirates SkyCargo is set to woo the Indian cargo industry after participating in Air Cargo India (ACI) 2008, the region's biggest event for logistics operators, last month.

It was at ACI 2008 that Ram Menen, Emirates divisional senior vice president for cargo, and Prakash Nair, manager for network cargo sales development, received the "Air Cargo Carrier of the Year" award on behalf of Emirates.

"The trade market with the highest growth is likely to be in the Asia Pacific region where its share will go from 24% to 26% by 2011, and India and China will be major players in the growth," Menen said.

He emphasised the need for India to increase spending on infrastructure projects from the current 4.6% of GDP to 8%. India needs a USD30 billion infrastructure investment in the next five years to sustain its 8% annual economic growth.

"The cost of logistics in India is over 13% of the total GDP compared to less than 10% in Western Europe and North America and the main reason for this is the inefficiency of the system.

"Efficient supply chain management is the only way to bring these costs down and for this to happen, logistics infrastructure must consider developments in the science of the supply chain."

Nair confirmed India was one of the main points of growth for Emirates' operations this year.

"Our participation at the ACI forum will help establish a global focus on the region. With the launch of Sao Paulo last year, we now connect India to 99 destinations in 62 countries across six continents via our hub in Dubai."

Emirates operates three freighter flights to India - two to Mumbai and one to Chennai - using Boeing 747 freighters and offering bellyhold capacity on more than 95 passenger flights in each direction per week.