India's rising import-export trade, expected to increase to US$700 billion from its current $270 billion level in three years requires new investment to upgrade the nation's supply chain, said Commerce Minister GK Pillai, in a livemint.com news report.

Speaking at the CENTRUM conference, with its theme "Containerisation - Building Trade Competitive", the minister said there was a need to focus on efficiencies to leverage the booming trade, and this would require additional investment.

Quoting the success story of airport privatisation, Mr Pillai said the government would assign greater importance to beefing up infrastructure.

Mr. Pillai told the conference, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), that Special Economic Zone development had also been a success and he expressed the hope that the same techniques would be applied to trade development.

Government aims would also include hinterland connectivity, he said, to ensure seamless flow of containers and improved port productivity, a world class logistics system, development of an intermodal strategy optimising the existing infrastructure while building future capacity.