GMB non-major port capacity up by 20%

The Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB) has successfully expanded its non-major port capacity by 20 per cent to 235 million tonnes as against last year.

With the successful expansion, ports are now poised to contribute in cargo handling. The port sector in Gujarat has drawn investment worth Rs 2,000 crore expansion in 2008-09, majority of which is for Reliance Industries Limited (RIL)'s single point mooring (SPM) system.

In 2007-08, GMB ports had a capacity to handle 198 million tonnes. New projects, that had been taken up for expansion, significantly contributed to augmenting the capacity as a result of which during the fiscal year 2008-09 Gujarat's non major ports capacity got raised to 235 million tonnes, translating into growth of 20 per cent over the previous year.

 

With the major ports in India facing congestion problems as well as limitation on expansion of port facilities, GMB believes the capacity ramp up of non-major ports has come at the right time, an official release stated. "In 2007-08 Indian ports had a capacity of around 750 million tones. The total cargo traffic handled by both major and minor ports in 2007-08 stood at around 720.38 million tones which was clearly inadequate to deal with the future traffic demand. Most major ports suffer from very high capacity utilization. The current situation therefore is an opportunity for Gujarat ports fill in the growing gap between demand and supply," the release further stated.

With non-major ports in Gujarat having a variety of cargo handling facilities, the area of capacity expansion include development of container terminals, LNG terminals, dry bulk and liquid bulk cargo terminals, SPM - fast liquid cargo handling terminals, car terminals, Ro Ro type terminals – terminals for handling of Over Dimensional Cargo (ODC), expansion or construction of deep water berths, shipbuilding yard, expansion and modernization of equipments, and dredging through public private partnership (PPP) model.