Rites fixes 'thumb rule' for land allotment to ports

Rule bats for alloting 50 acres of land for every million tonne of cargo handling capacity proposed by developer

Rail India Technical and Economic Services (Rites), the engineering and consultancy arm of Indian Railways, has benchmarked land need for developers of non-major projects in Odisha.

In its final report submitted to the state commerce & transport department. Rites has suggested a 'thumb rule'- allotting 50 acres of land for every million tonne of cargo handling capacity proposed by the developer.

“Rites has done an extensive study on land requirement for non-major port projects. A detailed presentation has also been made before the port developers. Rites has given a slew of recommendations on offering land to port developers. We will implement these recommendations after the report is approved by the chief minister's office”, said a highly placed official source.

This is set to be the first ever benchmarking procedure for land allotment to port developers in the state. Earlier, the state government had decided to carry out a benchmarking study through Central agencies like Mecon for assessing land and water need for mega steel mills with capacities beyond six million tonne per annum.

Land is usually leased out to industrial and port projects on the basis of recommendations by Industrial Promotion & Investment Corporation of Odisha Ltd (Ipicol), the state's investment promotion agency.

Promoters of non-major ports, especially Dhamra Port Company Ltd (DPCL), an equal joint venture between Tata Steel and L&T, were keenly awaiting the report of Rites on land allotment.

Dhamra, a deep draught port off the coast of north Odisha, needed 800 acres of land for its proposed second phase expansion. After a slump in the iron ore export market, Dhamra port was aiming to boost its revenues through handling of diversified cargo like container cargo, liquid cargo, LNG (liquefied natural gas) and crude oil. DPCL had chalked out Rs  10,000-crore expansion plan to ramp up its berth strength to 13 from two presently and upgrade cargo handling capacity four-fold from 25 million tonne per annum (mtpa) to 100 mtpa in five years.

Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) had proposed to set up five mtpa LNG terminal within the Dhamra port premises at a cost of Rs 5000 crore.

The terminal needed 150 acres of land. “DPCL has submitted a master plan on its second phase expansion which is under our scrutiny. We haven't taken any decision on allotting land to the port yet”, the official said.