News / Tight capacity ex-India sees CMA CGM increase rates and surcharges

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CMA CGM has revised its surcharge policy covering trades out of India, changing its no-show penalty to apply per container instead of per booking, keeping the amount at IR4,200 ($45) plus local taxes, from 1 May.

And as India-Middle East capacity remains acutely tight, the carrier today also announced Indian shipments for ports across the Gulf would attract a general rate increase of $500 per container, also from 1 May.

The French carrier told customers the no-show change was part of “our efforts to improve our booking commitment and ensure better availability of equipment and space for our customers with effective planning”.

It said no-show fees would also apply to all non-spot, special equipment, and shipper-owned container bookings and warned: “In case containers are not picked up within the pickup window, the booking will be cancelled, and no-show fee will be invoiced accordingly.”

A no-show penalty is typically applied by carriers on containers that fail to show up for loading onto the booked sailing, with confirmed bookings cancelled by a shipper due to non-readiness of cargo or other business reasons.

A shipper booking often involves multiple container loading plans, so the updated policy has significant cost implications for CMA CGM’s clients, sources believe.

Booking cancellations or container no-shows usually increase during supply chain disruption, impacting carriers’ vessel utilisation plans.  To counter this downside risk, carriers often tend to overbook space on their vessels by up to 20%.

Other major container lines serving Indian trades have also attempted to levy similar charges on customers failing to honour shipment commitments, more widely during major capacity disruption, but apart from westbound trades to the US and Europe, CMA CGM is more active than its competitors on trades to risk-prone markets like the Persian Gulf and Russia.

Meanwhile, despite the US tariff and other geopolitical challenges, India’s export performance during the just-ended fiscal year 2025-26 was positive, edging up 1% year on year, to some $442bn by value, a record level.

“The export growth was driven by a diversified basket, including engineering goods, petroleum products, electronics, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, textiles, gems and jewellery, rice, and marine products,” said S C Ralhan, president of the Federation of Indian Export Organisations.