Following the Defence Ministry’s nod for the proposed port project on the Subarnarekha river mouth at the Bay of Bengal in
Baleswar district, the decks are cleared for the project’s construction from October this year.
The Subarnarekha port would be developed at a cost of Rs 4,000 crore and its construction would begin from October, informed Commerce and Transport Minister Dr Nrusingha Charan Sahu after chairing a meeting here on Thursday.
The project work, for which there is no problem relating to land acquisition, would be completed in 36 months, he said.
In June, the Defence Ministry gave clearance for the project construction.
The all-weather deep-draft commercial port, to be developed by the Chennai-based Creative Port Private Ltd (CPPL) would have an initial capacity of 10 million tonnes per annum (MTPA), which would be raised to 40 MTPA over 10 years.
Notably, the CPPL had signed an MoU with the State Government on December 18, 2006 to develop the project. Later, a revenue-sharing agreement was signed between the two sides on January 11, 2008.
Meanwhile, the Tata Steel has signed an agreement with the CPPL to get 51 per cent of equity in the project from the original promoters.
The Central Government gave environment clearance to the project in 2012. However, the project could not be executed with the objections raised by the Defence Ministry, which, however, gave its conditional clearance on June 5.