The Hindu : Business : Automation of cargo handling

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Nov 13, 2004

Business

Business

Automation of cargo handling

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, NOV. 12. In a bid to enhance automation of cargo handling, Airports Authority of India (AAI) has commissioned the second phase of its Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) programme and opened it to trade partners beginning this month at Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi. From next month, the EDI programme would be commissioned at Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata.

The trade partners include airlines, banks, importers, exporters and agencies like custom house clearing agents and IATA approved agencies. Under the second phase of EDI implementation between AAI and the trade partners, the exchange of messages between various participants will take place with the help of web based EDI using internet at the four metro airports -- Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.

EDI is an inter-organisational exchange of business documentation in structured, machine processable form over computer based communication network.

AAI officials said that documents hitherto had to be physically made available for each stage of processing international cargo including customs clearance at various counters of AAI and customs which took long time.

By introducing web-based EDI, various players can now feed in their export and import cargo formalities, heralding a major step towards paperless management of cargo handling.

The automation in the cargo processing exercise has been done by AAI at a cost of about Rs. 23 crores.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Business