Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust plans to spend 70 billion rupees over the next five years to develop its infrastructure, a top official said late on Wednesday.
In addition to developing its fourth terminal, the country's largest container port plans to extend one terminal, deepen and widen its harbour channels, buy rail-mounted quay and rubber-tyred gantry cranes.
To start with, the port plans to widen and deepen the harbour channel draught to 14 metres from 12.5 metres now. The project is expected to cost 8 billion rupees, Chairman S. Shahzad Hussain said. "We don't have a problem with funds... There are several banks who are interested," Hussain told reporters, adding it would be a mix of own resources and debt.
The western India-located port with its three terminals handled 2.30 million twenty-foot-equivalent containers in the first seven months of 2007/08, 26.4 per cent more than in the same period last year.
While Jawaharlal Nehru Port operates one terminal, one is handled by Dubai Ports World and the third is jointly operated by APM Terminals, which is part of AP Moller-Maersk and state-run Container Corp of India.
The government has announced a $12.4 billion plan to upgrade 12 major ports to meet the rising volume of trade. Cargo handled by these ports has risen 9.5 per cent a year over the last three years, a Citigroup report said.
Jawaharlal Nehru Port plans to buy three rail-mounted quay cranes by April 2008 and six rubber-tyred gantry cranes by 2009 to upgrade its container handling infrastructure, Hussain said. It takes about 159 hours for each container to move out of the port, which is far higher than that in developed nations and adds to transportation costs, N. Sasidharan, chief commissioner of customs, said.
Of this, eight percent of the total dwell time, right from the time of arrival to clearance of cargo, is taken up by the customs authorities, he said. "I need at least twice the staff I have now as the volume of traffic has gone up sharply," Sasidharan said.
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