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| Bengal government to take up port projects post elections |
| Sohini Das / Kolkata Apr 13, 2009, 00:09 IST |
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The West Bengal government will take up its two port projects on the Hooghly channel post-elections and is hoping to start work within this year, said commerce and industry secretary, Sabyasachi Sen.
The state government has been planning two ports, one container terminal at Kulpi, around 55 kilometers from Kolkata, and the other a deep water port in the Hooghly river estuary.
"We had a meeting with the chief secretary recently and both the projects are likely to move ahead after the elections are over. Work could start within this year", state industry secretary Sabyasachi Sen said.
The deep water port will have a depth of 21 metres and will enable bulk carriers to offload cargo for the state's petrochemical hub project in Nayachar island near Haldia. The Rs10,000 crore project would take around five to six years to build.
"The PCPIR developer would also build this port as it is part of the chemical hub project. It is not possible to run a refinery at Nayachar without a dedicated deep draft port", Sen told Business Standard.
The Denmark Hydraulic Institute, a consultancy firm on ports, has done a study on the project and given its nod. The state government has chosen New Kolkata International Development (NKID), a special purpose vehicle, promoted by the Salim group of Indonesia, Universal Success group and Unitech to develop the chemical hub project. "NKID is in the process of getting a technical feasibility study done by L&T Ramboll", Sen said. Sources in the industry department, however, indicated that L&T could also build the port.
Industry sources said, Bengal needed a deep water port as it was facing problems with the draft in the channel. Dredging costs are moving up by the day. CII president Venu Srinivasan said on his recent visit to the city that Bengal had not built a greenfield port for years now and it was the right time to invest in infrastructure. As for the Rs 1,200 crore container terminal and special economic zone in Kulpi,the agreement between the state government and the Kolkata Port Trust (KOPT) on pilot sharing and dredging related issues is yet to be signed.
"The project, as a result, had not achieved financial closure as of now. But we expect to get things moving after the elections", said Mahendra Jalan, a director of Bengal Port, the company that partners DP World on the Kulpi port project. Dubai-based DP World is developing the container terminal at Kulpi that is expected to do 0.4 million twenty equivalent units(TEU) in the first year of its operation. Phase-I of the port development was supposed to be completed at the end of 2009, as laid out in the MoU signed between KoPT and the state government in 2001. The memorandum is yet to be converted into a final agreement, but the developers and the industry department were hopeful to start work by the end of this year.
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