Port traffic up 9.89% in 2003-04

The traffic at major ports in India rose 9.89 per cent in 2003-04, against 9.01 per cent in the previous fiscal. The quantity of cargo handled by ports this fiscal increased to 344.52 million tonnes, from 313.52 million tonnes in 2002-03. This is the highest growth in five years.

Iron ore cargo, witnessing the greatest rise, was up 16.2 per cent to 58.86 million tonnes in 2003-04, against 50.66 million tonnes in the previous year. This was on account of a strong demand for the product in China.

Both container and petroleum, oil and lubricants (POL) cargo showed a robust growth of 15.66 per cent and 11.52 per cent, respectively. Container traffic increased to 3.89 million twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs) in 2003-04 from 3.36 million TEUs in the previous year. POL traffic was 122.21 million tonnes against 109.5 million tonnes during 2002-03.

The Jawahar Lal Nehru Port continued to be the only port with more than a million TEUs of container traffic and crossed the 2 million mark, registering 2.26 million TEUs.

This is 17.56 per cent greater than the throughput of 1.93 million TEUs recorded during 2002-03. The growth in container cargo movement drove up traffic at the port by 16.5 per cent.

New Mangalore and Murmagao ports handled a record traffic of 26.67 million tonnes and 27.87 million tonnes, respectively.

New Mangalore saw a 24.47 per cent growth despite a fall in iron ore traffic due to truckers' strike, which was compensated by a 33.45 per cent jump in the POL traffic.

The container terminal at Visakhapatnam saw a large fall of 18.18 per cent in traffic to 18,000 TEUs from 22,000 TEUs registered during 2002-03. The terminal became operational in June 2003.

Mumbai's container traffic continued its downward spiral for the fifth consecutive year, showing a 8.8 per cent fall to 197,000 TEUs in 2003-04, against 213,000 TEUs in the previous year.

Overall traffic in Chennai grew 8.97 per cent at 36.7 million tonnes, compared with 33.68 million tonnes in 2002-03. The growth could be attributed to a 26.59 per cent jump in container traffic at the port, which is the highest among all the major ports.