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India’s Vizhinjam and Sri Lanka’s Colombo ports may be seen as rivals, but shared stakes hint at a more collaborative maritime future.
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‘Coastal States and port cities will become key growth centres for a developed India’, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi recently remarked, while commissioning the first phase of the INR 8,800-crore Vizhinjam International Deep-water Multipurpose Seaport near Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala. He added that the Centre is committed to strengthening this maritime channel of economic power and elevating India’s port infrastructure to new heights.
Strategically, Vizhinjam lies just 10 nautical miles from the bustling Suez-Far East shipping route, which connects Europe, the Gulf, and Asia—the primary east-west maritime axis/corridor. This location is expected to reduce India’s reliance on foreign ports for transhipment, especially Colombo, which lies only 135 nautical miles away and handles a major portion of India’s goods.
Vizhinjam is India’s first transhipment port capable of berthing ultra-large container ships. It is situated close to Sri Lanka’s Colombo Port, which currently handles 70 percent of India-bound transhipment cargo. The success of such ports, which traverse oceans through every voyage, depends on whether global shipping lines are willing to include them in their networks.
Strategically, Vizhinjam lies just 10 nautical miles from the bustling Suez-Far East shipping route, which connects Europe, the Gulf, and Asia—the primary east-west maritime axis/corridor. This location is expected to reduce India’s reliance on foreign ports for transhipment, especially Colombo, which lies only 135 nautical miles away and handles a major portion of India’s goods.
What gives Vizhinjam an edge is its natural 24-metre depth, enabling it to berth the world’s largest container ships without significant dredging. Its rubble-mounded breakwater, an engineering marvel, is 2,960 metres long, constructed at depths of 18 to 20 metres, and rises to an overall height of 28 metres, equivalent to a nine-storey structure. This makes it the deepest breakwater constructed in India.
Phase one of the port offers a capacity of 1 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units). Once fully operational, it will be capable of handling 6.2 million TEUs, aligning with India’s projected transhipment demands.
Even before its formal inauguration, Vizhinjam has demonstrated many achievements and operational potential during its trial run and subsequent five months of commercial activity. In February and March 2025, it ranked first among 15 southern Indian ports in cargo handled: 78,833 TEUs from 40 vessels in February, and 1.08 lakhs TEUs from 51 vessels in March. In total, it has berthed 285 ships and handled 5.93 lakhs TEUs—nearly 110 percent of its current/installed capacity.
Its ability to berth massive mother ships—such as the MSC Turkiye, one of the largest container vessels in the world (24,346 TEUs) and MSC Claude Girardet (24,116 TEUs)—underscores its engineering prowess and global readiness. State-of-the-art automation and streamlined infrastructure are designed to ensure rapid vessel turnaround and minimal congestion.
Vizhinjam has a rich maritime legacy, dating back to the first century and continuing into the 12th century, particularly during the reign of Chola King Rajaraja. It re-entered policy discussions when India began exploring domestic alternatives to the Colombo Port.
For years, India’s transhipment needs were met through Colombo, Singapore, and Dubai. Although the case for a domestic hub was strong, New Delhi hesitated—concerned that redirecting traffic might impact/hurt Colombo’s business and economy, and by extension, Sri Lanka.
However, this caution gave way to strategic caveats after Sri Lanka invited China—India’s regional adversary—to build and operate the Hambantota Port over a decade ago. New Delhi feared that Chinese control of the port could create vulnerabilities, especially if Indian vessels were forced to circumnavigate Sri Lanka while moving between the eastern and western shores, under Chinese oversight and the possibility of a conflict in case of military flare-ups along their Northern border.
The Indian anxieties, gauging by the mood of the strategic analysts in the country, became more pronounced when a Chinese firm was given an 85 percent stake in the Colombo International Container Terminal (CICT), followed by a similar stake in the new warehousing facility there. As if to add insult to injury, the Sri Lankan government also cancelled a trilateral pact with India and Japan for the joint development and operation of the port’s Eastern Container Terminal (ECT), which was three kilometres from the proposed China-funded Colombo Port City, an international financial hub, and the biggest investment in the country, then and since. Work on the Port City has since been progressing, though not at the same pace as originally planned, owing to the intervening economic crisis in Sri Lanka.
Going beyond strategic concerns about Sri Lanka, New Delhi, in the interim, also began exploring commercial alternatives—starting with stand-by ports to Colombo—in anticipation of any future disruption in transhipment traffic owing to extraneous reasons.
Though India’s Adani Group—the private sector promoter of the Vizhijnam Port—did get to partner with a Sri Lankan business group to jointly develop the Colombo West International Terminal, or simply, the Western Container Terminal (WCT), along with the public entity managing the nation’s ports thereafter, the Indian official thinking had consolidated in the meantime. It is another matter that the WCT commenced operations in April 2025, a month ahead of the inauguration at Vizhinjam.
In the early stages of weighing options—especially vis-à-vis the emerging Chinese presence along Sri Lanka’s coastline—India also revived the long-forgotten Sethusamudram Ship Canal Project, whose aim was to help avoid circumnavigation by dredging the narrow waters between India and Sri Lanka along the southern Tamil Nadu coast. The project, which was launched with much pomp, is now pending clearance from the Supreme Court, on matters of religious belief and the mythological Ram Sethu, dating back to the Hindu epic—Ramayana.
Going beyond strategic concerns about Sri Lanka, New Delhi, in the interim, also began exploring commercial alternatives—starting with stand-by ports to Colombo—in anticipation of any future disruption in transhipment traffic owing to extraneous reasons. The need for a high draft and proximity to the busy Indian Ocean Sea-lanes of Communication (SLOC) was the main consideration, then and now.
Initially, the existing Cochin Port up north—also in Kerala and not far from Vizhinjam—was the shortlisted candidate. Much of the basic infrastructure was already in place, and it was a port already in operation. However, strategic considerations such as the presence of a shipyard and the lack of space for future expansion prompted policy-makers to look elsewhere—and Vizhijnam fitted the bill.
At Vizhinjam, the PM pointed out how the port economies reach their full potential when infrastructure and the ease of doing business are promoted together. He said this was the Central port’s blueprint and waterways policy over the last decade. He also stressed the critical role of the private sector, adding that thousands of crores have been invested through public-private partnerships (PPP) over the past decade, upgrading India’s ports to global standards and making them future-ready.
As is known, the Centre is launching SAGARMALA 2.0 with additional funding to bridge infrastructure gaps. The PM had launched the SAGARMALA programme to ‘transform the country's maritime sector…for port-led development and coastal community upliftment.’
The question is: will the Vizhinjam Port be a compatriot or a threat to Colombo Port? While multiple geo-economic and geo-political developments will dictate the course of port economies in this region—as elsewhere—in the coming years and decades, the fact that the private sector promoters of Vizhinjam have also invested in Colombo West Terminal implies that there is both need and space and business for the two to grow.
Not until long ago, New Delhi was also toying with the idea of developing another container transhipment port at Enayam (Colachel), 35 km south of Vizhinjam, even though the fast-growing Tuticorin Port was only 145 km away. That would mean, from Kochi to Tuticorin/Thoothukudi, there would have been four major ports instead of the current three. However, the Centre dropped the Colachel proposal after mass protests by the local fishing community and environmentalists.
This only proves that none of these ports is a threat to one another; rather, they can all grow together. This conviction seems to be behind PM Modi’s ‘Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions’ (MAHASAGAR), unveiled earlier this year. In turn, the new vision is an expanded version of the PM’s earlier call for ‘Security and Growth for All in the Region’ (SAGAR), unveiled in 2015. It is worth noting that in most Indian languages, ‘Sagar’ also means ‘sea’ and ‘Mahasagar’, the ‘Ocean’ —in this case, the Indian Ocean and its littoral nations to begin with.
N Sathiya Moorthy is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst and Political Commentator
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.
N. Sathiya Moorthy is a policy analyst and commentator based in Chennai.
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