As part of a promotional campaign to attract cargo traffic as well as investment, the Paradip Port Trust (PPT) organised a trade meet at Jajpur Road on Wednesday after a gap of three years to highlight various initiatives undertaken in operational areas, ongoing and upcoming projects and trade facilitation measures by the PPT to the customers.
The campaign focussed on the incentives offered by the PPT, the upcoming projects in the port area and the investment climate. PPT Deputy Chairman N Vaiyapuri, in his keynote address, said the PPT has clocked 89 MMT cargo handling last year; and this year it is vying for a coveted 100-MMT mark. Till date in this fiscal, it has emerged as the fastest-growing Major Port in the country by clocking 12% growth. The port now has an installed capacity of 143 MMT per annum, which would rise by another 45 MMT on completion of four ongoing projects by 2020.
Bringing fair competition in cargo handling operations, he said, the PPT has enforced two cardinal principles: importers and exporters are free to appoint any licensed stevedores and the stevedores are free to engage equipments from any source without any restriction. It has ultimately resulted in reduction of handling cost approximately from Rs 140 to Rs 100 per tonne. In recognition of significant improvement in the performance parameters, the PPT bagged Best Performance Award for the year 2015-16 from the Shipping Ministry.
Regarding infrastructure front, an inner harbour would be developed for handling Cape Size vessel in FY 2021.
The western dock would be developed with two berths of 15 -MMTPA capacity each. On completion of these projects, the PPT would become the country’s No. 1 port in terms of cargo traffic and port capacity among the Major Ports.
A Smart Port City is coming up with a Multimodal logistics Park and an Industrial Park.
At the Trade Meet, there was a highly-fruitful interactive session between the representatives from the industry and the Government officials.