KoPT planning to set up a barge terminal at Balagarh: Kumar

Kolkata Port Trust is planning to set up a barge terminal at Balagarh in West Bengal's Hooghly district, a top KoPT official said Wednesday.

The cost of the project would be Rs 300 crore, KoPT chairman Vineet Kumar said.

Kumar speaking at the Bharat Chamber of Commerce here, said the idea for setting up the barge terminal was to decrease the congestion at the Kolkata port.

Hopefully, the work would start by the end of September when the port would go for bidding, he said.

Kumar said that terminal would come up on 300 acres of land which is owned by the KoPT.

Saying that the Kolkata port was growing at nine per cent, Kumar added that KoPT was the second highest growing port in the country out of the 12 major ports.

Last year, the port handled 58 million tonne of cargo. "So far, already 62 million tonne have been handled so far. Roughly, another one million tonne will be handled in the full fiscal", he said.

He said that challenges were there as KoPT was a riverine port hence there was a problem of draft.

In October, the first Cape vessel was handled by the port which had carrying capacity of 1.67 lakh tonne.

Kumar said with the revival of the steel industry, KoPT was having a good future for which it was planning additional berths at Haldia.

"There is also a lot of scope for handling LPG and LNG cargo as well", he said.

Kumar said KoPT was focusing on container cargo as it was city port.