Chennai Port surpasses target

Chennai Port has handled an all-time high of 53.41 million tonnes of cargo for 2006-07, registering a growth of 13.04 per cent over the previous year's figure of 47.25 million tonnes and also surpassing the ministry's target of 52.27 million tonnnes for 2006-07.

The port has been posting a growth rate of 13.41 per cent in handling cargo traffic over the last three years and occupies the third position among all major ports in terms of total tonnage handled.

Addressing a press conference K Suresh, chairman, Chennai Port said the port had emerged as the busiest for container traffic on the east coast of India and handled more container traffic than other ports on the east coast.

It handled an all-time high of 8.85 lakh TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) or 14.16 million tonnes, a growth of 20.50 per cent over previous year's 7.34 lakh TEUs while other ports on the east coast put together handled about 6 lakh tonnes.

Of the total throughput of 53.41 million tonnes, exports accounted for 22.94 million tonnes as compared with 20.05 million tonnes in 2005-06 and imports accounted for 30.47 million tonnes compared with 27.20 million tonnes. "The higher import reflected the growth of manufacturing activity in the hinterland of the state," he said.

Chennai Port, which is on its 125th year of existence, remained a key car exporting port of the country with an export of 114,756 cars in 2006-07 as compared with 102,692 cars in the previous year.

The car exports is slated to increase in the future with the setting up of car manufacturing facility near Chennai by Mahindra-Renault-Nissan consortium, which is exploring the option of exporting the cars through Chennai port.

During 2006-07, the port handled 12.94 million tonnes of petroleum, oil and lubricants (POL) compared with 13.21 million tonnes of POL in the previous year.

"The decline was due to collapse of Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd (CPCL)'s crude oil pipeline, which affected the operation for about 10 days and also due to shut down of operations by CPCL for a month for maintenance works," said Suresh.

He added that iron ore traffic reported a growth of 10.78 per cent at 10.48 million as compared with 9.46 million tonnes for 2005-06. The port is the cheapest for iron ore traffic and export continued to grow even after government's levy of export duty.

On financial parameters, the port reported a provisional operating surplus of Rs 182.34 crore for 2006-07 as against the actual of Rs 118.75 crore for 2005-06. The provisional net surplus before tax and after tax were Rs 218.23 crore and Rs 156.21 crore respectively as against Rs 158.37 crore and Rs 133.57 crore in the previous year.

The provisional operating income for 2006-07 is Rs 530.95 crore against the actual income of Rs 431.69 crore in 2005-06. Salaries and wages accounted for about 48 per cent of the total expenditure of the Chennai port.