Paradip port crosses 25 mn tonne mark

The Paradip Port, a major port on the eastern coast, has crossed the 25 million tonne mark in traffic. The port handled an all time record traffic of 25.31 million tonne during 2003-04 compared to 23.90 million tonne during the corresponding period in the previous year.

Although the rate of growth of the port over the last three years has remained more or less same, the crossing of 25 million tonne makes a lot of difference at the psychological level, pointed out Subrat Tripathy, deputy chairman of the port. "This is what we had been dreaming of for a couple of years", he said.

Addressing the newsmen here yesterday, Tripathy said the performance of the port had gone up on many fronts, including tonnage cargo-handling and efficiency level. He said a record 1,041 ships were handled during the year and a total of 8 million tonne of thermal coal was handled at the mechanised coal handling plant of the port.

On the efficiency front, the average pre-berthing time of vessels has dropped from 0.43 days in 2002-03 to 0.21 days this year. The average turn around time of vessels also came down from three days last year to 2.88 days this year. "Our target is to reach the global standard of less than 2.5 days", Tripathy said.

He said, the project to deepen the approach channel of the port at a cost of Rs 134 crore is at an advanced stage of implementation and the port is awaiting the clearance of the Central government in this regard, which may come soon.

Similarly, the pre-qualification bids to build berths to handle clean cargo on BOT basis have been received from private parties.