Experts stress on easing norms for port development

With the projected traffic of the port sector in the country pegged at 1570 million tonne per annum (mtpa) by 2011-12, the government will have to remove various impediments to achieve overall growth of the ports.

The impediments include both procedural and infrastructural like dispensing with the system of referring all the public-private-partnership (PPP) projects to PPP Approval Board of the Union finance ministry, insistence on up-front fixation of tariff for the developers and insistence on using a model concession agreement. Simultaneously, a clearing point needs to be set up for the benefit of the logistic providers, Micheal Pinto, former secretary of shipping, Government of India (GoI) said.

Delivering the keynote address in the Port Conclave organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), he said, the major ports are required to create additional capacity of 493.2 mtpa, the non-major ports 345 mtpa by 2011-12. While the existing capacity of the major ports in the country is estimated at 530 million tonne, the capacity of the non-major ports is 202 mtpa. However, after the proposed capacity expansion, the major ports will have a total capacity of 1023.2 mtpa and the non-major ports 547 mtpa by 2011-12.

Pinto said, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the traffic of the ports in the country was 5.88 percent during the last 58 years since 1950-51 and this increased to 10.77 percent during the last five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08.

The traffic handled by the non-major ports increased from 6.72 mtpa in 1990-91 to 202 mtpa in 2008-09. On the other hand, the share of container cargo has also increased to 17.59 percent in 2008-09 from 5.26 percent in 1990-91.