Chennai port plans Rs 300 cr marina

The project is expected to be ready by the year end.

The Chennai Port Trust (CPT) is planning to construct a cruise marina with an investment of Rs 300 crore, targeting high networth individuals.

CPT chairman K Suresh said the feasibility report would be ready by March 2009 and the project was expected to be completed by the year end. He declined to give the ownership details.

Such marinas exist in Singapore and in other western countries. The luxury boats can accommodate a minimum of two people and a maximum of 10.

Speaking about the ro-ro terminal, Suresh said expressions of interest for the project would be invited in March and the project would be completed by May 2009. The project would involve an investment of Rs 48 crore. Around 6,000 cars can be parked at a time in the new terminal.

The port handled 140,000 export cars as on December 2008 and expects to export another 30,000-40,000 units by the end of March this year. In 2007-08, this number stood at 1,37,971 units as compared with 1,14,756, a year ago, an increase of 20 per cent.

Meanwhile, the port registered a marginal decline in cargo traffic. The total traffic handled between April and December 2008 came down to 41,661 tonne as compared with 42,318 tonne during the same period last year. This was mainly due to the drop in iron ore and fertiliser (raw) traffic, which declined 23 and 12 per cent respectively.

While iron ore traffic declined to 6,114 tonne from 8,008 tonne, fertiliser (raw) was down to 193 tonne, as compared with 221 tonne. Non-coking coal traffic dropped 4 per cent to 5,949 tonne from 6,200 tonne.

However, POL (petroleum, oil and lubricants) traffic increased 1.81 per cent to 9,625 tonne from 9,454 tonne, fertiliser traffic rose 6 per cent to 441 tonne from 416 tonne, and coking coal traffic was up 17 per cent to 1,400 tonne from 1,192 tonne.

Container traffic reported a 9 per cent increase to 89,5447 TEUs from 82,1156 TEUs, a year ago.