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As trade routes fracture and geopolitics hardens, IMEC offers a diversification-driven connectivity model—less about rivalry, more about resilience
When the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) was announced on the sidelines of the G20 India Summit 2023, as a trade route backed by the United States (US), many interpreted it as a counterweight to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Yet, although previous Trump and Biden administrations supported the corridor, the trade uncertainties created by Trump 2.0’s reciprocal tariff policies and protectionism do not augur well for the development of a multi-state, multimodal transport and trade corridor like the IMEC. There are indications that the US is largely out of the IMEC game, although President Trump described it in February 2025 as “one of the greatest trade routes in history.” In the process, the IMEC has now emerged as a game being played by the other economies that are the parties to the 2023 Agreement, namely, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the European Union (EU), France, Germany, and Italy.
IMEC should not be understood as a mirror image or a rival replica of the BRI, but as a structurally different connectivity architecture
Yet, this has not entirely eclipsed the question often posed ever since the IMEC agreement was signed —Is IMEC a counterweight to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)? The question, though provocative, is both important and misleading at the same time. It is important from a geostrategic perspective, as connectivity today is embedded at the heart of geopolitics and growth. Again, it is misleading because IMEC should not be understood as a mirror image or a rival replica of the BRI, but as a structurally different connectivity architecture, anchored in diversification, standards, sustainability, and shared economic values of the participating economies. For almost all the participating nations except the US, IMEC does not represent a geopolitical contest. Instead, it serves as economic insurance to future-proof global trade in an era marked by supply-chain shocks, geopolitical fragmentation, and climate stress.
The imperative becomes clear when viewed through the lens of recent global disruptions. In March 2021, the Suez Canal was blocked by the massive container ship, leaving several vessels stranded. This disruption impacted nearly 12 percent of global trade until a major salvage operation successfully freed it. More recently, the Red Sea crisis of 2023–24, caused by the Houthis’ attacks on commercial shipping, exposed the fragility of over-concentrated trade routes. Nearly a quarter of India’s cargo transiting the Red Sea faced delays as vessels were rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope, adding around 3,500 nautical miles, increasing transit time by over a week, raising fuel costs by close to a million dollars per voyage, and increasing insurance premiums.
With the largest EU-India trade concentrated in the Red Sea-Suez Canal corridor, Indian exporters chose to hold back shipments during the last quarter of 2023–24, leading to a decline in EU-India trade. With the EU being one of India’s largest trading partners, accounting for over 12 percent of total merchandise trade, the vulnerability is perceptible.
For India, therefore, IMEC represents not a geopolitical provocation, but a strategy for economic risk management through diversification of trade routes.
IMEC directly responds to this structural risk. It is not designed to replace existing maritime routes such as the Suez Canal corridor or the North-South Corridor (that goes through Russia), but to complement them. For India, therefore, IMEC represents not a geopolitical provocation, but a strategy for economic risk management through diversification of trade routes.
Fig. 1: The IMEC Map
Source: IMEC
Although this multi-modal, multi-sector economic architecture linking ports, railways, digital infrastructure, energy systems, and logistics platforms unfolds as a trader and transport corridor that could reduce transit time by up to 40 per cent and logistics costs by nearly 30 per cent, it is more than that. Its deeper value lies in how it reorganises production geography. IMEC creates a triangular economic architecture: India as a manufacturing and services hub; the Gulf as a logistics, energy, and capital platform; and Europe as a technology and consumption centre. This is not extraction-based connectivity, but co-created value embedded across regions. This structure also reflects a shift in the Middle East’s economic role. The Gulf is no longer defined solely by hydrocarbons. It is increasingly a logistics, finance, and innovation hub—positioned to intermediate trade, capital, and data flows between Asia and Europe.
The distinction between the two runs deeper. The BRI has largely been a bilateral, state-driven, and debt-financed initiative. IMEC, by contrast, is inherently multilateral, market-oriented, and standards-driven. It does not export a governance model; it embeds transparency, interoperability, and sustainability into its design.
Where BRI prioritised scale and speed, IMEC prioritises resilience, bankability, and long-term viability. It seeks to align with climate goals, digital governance norms, and diversified risk-sharing—features increasingly demanded by investors and societies alike. IMEC’s long-term legitimacy will depend on whether it becomes a platform for sustainable and ethical connectivity. Its energy and digital pillars can support renewable power trade, green hydrogen corridors, and cross-border data infrastructure. This aligns naturally with the EU Green Deal and India’s low-carbon growth strategy. BRI, as such, has not revealed any such principles of sustainability and instead employs a single-nation-driven, top-down approach. Furthermore, with the opportunity to integrate digital and ethical standards, beginning from data governance and Artificial Intelligence (AI) norms to labour and environmental safeguards, into the corridor’s architecture, IMEC can become a testing ground for “ethical connectivity,” shaping how future trade corridors operate.
The motivations for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) emerged from a “consumption-led-growth” strategy that involves boosting domestic consumption expenditure through increases in domestic purchasing power, as acknowledged by China’s 14th Five-Year Plan. The prevailing vagaries of international trade cannot act as a reliable force for growth. Hence, there were manifold increases in wages, salaries, and consequent labour costs in China over the past decade, which could have made their exports less competitive in the external markets. This led them to consider offloading production components to locations with abundant and affordable human and natural capital. Therefore, BRI turned out to be an exploration to capture the “factor” markets of Africa and South Asia alongside the product markets of the EU, the Middle East, and the US.
BRI already has a major head start over IMEC. Since its announcement in 2013, cumulative BRI investment has already exceeded US$ 1.3 trillion, whereas the IMEC has just begun its journey. The conflict in the Gaza Strip delayed the project’s progress for a considerable period. Though the war in Gaza is technically under a ceasefire, whether it has "ended" is a subject of significant debate and speculation.
Corridors fail not for lack of vision, but for lack of capital aligned with risk.
There are underrated logistical chokepoints in IMEC's current design that will require substantial infrastructure investments. The corridor proposes a movement of cargo from the western Indian ports of Mumbai or Mundra to Jebel Ali, and onward by rail through the UAE and Saudi Arabia to Israel’s Haifa port. However, its viability is constrained by missing rail links, particularly in Saudi Arabia, and significant asymmetries in port capacity. While Jebel Ali handles about 90 million tonnes annually, Haifa’s capacity is limited to roughly 30 million tonnes, creating a structural bottleneck. Without substantial expansion at Haifa, IMEC is unlikely to emerge as a scalable alternative to the Red Sea–Suez route, where Egyptian ports collectively manage close to 180 million tonnes of cargo each year.
Corridors fail not for lack of vision, but for lack of capital aligned with risk. IMEC’s challenge is not a shortage of money per se, but the mismatch between long-term infrastructure needs and the risk appetites of investors. Globally, institutional investors allocate barely 5 percent of their portfolios to infrastructure. IMEC sits at the intersection of this paradox: enormous capital availability, but insufficient risk mitigation. The solution lies in innovative, layered financing with a portfolio approach blending private and public finance.
While BRI redefined the notion of global connectivity projects, the same ambition can prevail for IMEC, given its architecture and vision, and more so because it is fundamentally different and divergent from the BRI.
The challenge now is execution. Political uncertainties in West Asia, regulatory fragmentation, and coordination gaps pose real risks. Yet the economic logic is compelling.
IMEC is not a counterweight to the BRI, but a next-generation model of connectivity—one grounded in resilience, sustainability, and shared value. Its success will depend not only on physical infrastructure, but more on the quality of institutions, finance, and cooperation underpinning the corridor. For India, IMEC offers a platform to accelerate logistics reform, deepen manufacturing integration, and position itself as a central node in global value chains. For Europe, it strengthens strategic autonomy and supply-chain resilience. For the Gulf, it reinforces a transition from hydrocarbons to logistics, finance, and innovation. If IMEC succeeds, it will emerge as a template for future generations on how democracies and market economies with similar value systems can build connectivity in the 21st-century—not through dominance or debt, but through partnership, trust, and long-term value creation.
Nilanjan Ghosh is Vice President - Development Studies at the Observer Research Foundation.
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
Dr Nilanjan Ghosh heads Development Studies at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and serves as the operational and executive head of ORF’s Kolkata Centre. He ...
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