Minister for Road, Transport, Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari on Tuesday chaired a meeting of heads of all major Indian ports to draw up a plan for modernisation.
Gadkari has been pushing for developing India’s coastal shipping to optimally use the country’s expansive coastline of over 7500 kms. At the meeting, the minister who reviewed port performance, sought ideas to develop ports so as to improve profit margins and also increase export-import traffic.
Sources in the shipping ministry said that several port expansion and modernization projects are underway to enhance million tones capacity by at least 220 million tones.
According to the figures with the Centre, the capacity of all the major ports including Kandla, JNPT and Haldia Dock Complex as on March 31, 2015 was 871.52 MT.
“We are working on finalizing a detailed plan about individual projects under the Sagarmala project. The idea is to enhance last mile connectivity to the ports to
push for port-led development,” said an official.
“Although most of our 12 major ports are operating at capacity utilisation of about 70 percent, which is agreed to be the ideal ratio for efficiency, we lag behind global standards in terms of turnaround time,” said the official.