Chennai port turnover up in FY09 despite slowdown

Despite slowdown in economy which has severely affected shipping trades, Chennai port has registered a five per cent positive growth, as its turnover augmented to Rs 658.27 crore in the fiscal 2008-09 compared to Rs 628.09 crore in 2007-08.

However the port’s net profit in this fiscal has come down by 35 per cent to Rs 194.59 crore from Rs 302.49 crore, which can be attribute to 23 per cent increase in total expenditure, increased to Rs 567.13 crore compared to Rs 459.14 crore in the fiscal 2007-08.

Chennai port,which is now the country’s third busiest port in handling cargos has shown a better performance in volumes, which increase to 57.49 million tonnes(MT) a marginal 0.6 per cent up from 57.15 MT in 2007-08.

The growth mainly contributed by cars export which rose up by 80.25 per cent to 2,48,697 units from 1,37,971 in last year.

However port has shown negative trends in handlings railway wagons, which fell by 9.45 per cent and also in berth occupancy which came down by 9.46 per cent. However port has missed its target of handling 64,000MT cargos by 10.17 per cent.

Speaking to reporters during announcements of the port’s financial performance, K.Suresh, Chairman, Chennai Port Trust, said, "Despite recession, we have managed our performance in handling cargo and also our turnover, but we have seen a drop in export by 6 per cent to 22.85 MT compared to 24.31 MT last year and it happened due to drop in handling iron ore cargos by 2.57 MT to 8.25 from 10.82 MT last year. However import has gone up by 5.48 per cent to 34.68 MT from 32.84 MT last year."
 
"We are now the third largest and busiest port in India after, Kandla and Vizag and we have also now reached 87 th position among top 100 ports in the worlds in handling container TEUs(twenty-foot equivalent units)," he added.

Speaking on ports major plans, he said, "We are building a mega-container terminal with an estimated cost of Rs 3686 crore and it has a capacity to handle 4 million TEUs per annum and it will be operationalsied by 2015. We had received tenders from 39 bidders and we are short listing now and it will be cleared after security clearance from central government."

He also noted that the work on a Rs 1,655-crore project of elevated expressway to maduravoyal  will commenced by February 2012. He said the port was also spending Rs 200 crore in the modernization of Chennai port and setting-up a wind mill farm for 7.5MW of power generation at an estimated cost of 40.50 crore.