Govt to award port projects worth Rs 4,575 cr under PPP

The government has identified projects for augmenting capacity by 67 million tonnes at five major ports under the PPP mode by March, entailing an investment of Rs 4,575 crore.
The capacity of the country's 12 major ports - Kandla, Mumbai, JNPT, Marmugao, New Mangalore, Cochin, Chennai, Ennore, V O Chidambarnar, Visakhapatnam, Paradip and Kolkata stood at about 700 MT as on March 31 this year.
"Seven projects entailing an investment of Rs 4,575 crore have been identified for award under the public-private- partnership (PPP) mode at five major ports in the country during the current fiscal," a Shipping Ministry official said.

These include dry port at Chennai port, development of liquid terminal at Jawaharlal Nehru Port, development of liquid terminal and operation of container terminal at Kandla Port, storage of bulk cement at Mumbai port and development of iron ore and multi-cargo berths at Paradip Port, Odisha.
"These projects would entail capacity augmentation of 66.95 MT," the official said.
Forty-four projects worth Rs 30,221 crore are already under implementation under the PPP mode in the ports sector.

Last month, Minister of State for Shipping Krishanpal Gurjar had said the government had taken a total of 72 projects for the sector under PPP mode and of these 28 projects of Rs 8,945.86 crore have completed.

Twelve major ports under the Centre handle about 61 per cent of the country's total cargo traffic.
India has one of the largest merchant shipping fleet among the developing countries and is ranked 17th in the world.