Inflationary fears and the general economic slowdown did not dampen the performance of Jawaharlal Nehru port, India's premier container port, and neighbouring Mumbai port in the just ended fiscal, with the two ports on the West Coast crossing the 55 million tonne mark in their respective throughputs.
While JNPT clocked traffic of 55.76 million tonnes, including non-container cargoes, registering a 24 per cent growth, Mumbai port touched the 57.04 mt mark (9 per cent growth).
Boom in containerised traffic shored up JNPT's traffic, while it was general cargo that kept up a steady flow of traffic to Mumbai port.
In terms of TEU units, JNPT handled 4.06 million TEUs , reflecting a 23 per cent growth.
Out of this, JNPT's own terminal handled 1.26 million TEUs, while the other two privately run terminals, NSICT and GTICT, handled 1.51 million tones and 1.29 million tones respectively.
Box handling
In a significant achievement, JNPT handled 3.82 lakh TEUs of containers in the last month, the earlier record being 3.58 lakh TEUs in January this year.
Mumbai port ended the year with its highest ever traffic of 57.04 mt, surpassing the previous year's throughput of 52.36 mt. In fact, this fiscal, the port handled monthly traffic in excess of 4.2 mt consistently, with the highest at 5.13 mt in October.
Incentives
The major commodities handled during this period were imports of iron and steel, POL and POL products, coal, pulses and exports of iron and steel, sugar and motor vehicles. POL traffic registered a growth of 15.25 per cent during the year, while coal clocked a growth of 16.59 per cent.
A senior official of the port said the surge in traffic could be attributed partly to the string of incentives offered by the port, which included pre-shipment storage facilities for raw sugar exports, iron & steel, and vehicles, long term storage facilities for import bagged cargoes, concession rate of demurrage on export of agricultural products and free days on containers/containerised cargo for the containers received from neighbouring ports.
Expansion plans
To keep pace with the anticipated increased in the flow of traffic, the port has lined up an expansion programme. "The concession agreement for the offshore container terminal project has already been signed and operation at the existing berth ¡®BPS' in Indira Dock is expected to be taken over by the terminal operator from June this year. The project, when completed, will increase the container capacity to 1.2 million TEUs," the official said.
The other new projects include development of Harbour Wall Berths, which will increase the cargo handling capacity by 8 mt per annum. The construction of second berth for handling chemicals at new Pir Pau and fifth Oil berth at Jawahar Dweep are also in the pipeline, which will increase the handling capacity by 2 mt and 15 mt per annum respectively.
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