To speed up the development of ports and boost trade activity in the country, the Centre has decided to give more powers to major port trusts by allowing them to take critical operational and financial decisions. “Orders enhancing the financial limits and also for streamlining the powers exercisable by major port trusts have been issued by the Government,” said Minister of State for Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan in a written reply to the lok Sabha on Thursday.
The orders have been given on recommendations of a committee set up in 2013 to suggest measures to rationalise the extent powers of the major port trust. “The areas covered include the powers to execute contracts and deposit works, take temporary loans or overdrafts, incur capital expenditure, sanction works, compound or compromise claims, writing off losses and various housekeeping functions,” the Minister said.
“Safeguards have been provided so as to ensure due diligence and accountability in the exercise of the financial powers,” said Radhakrishnan. These enhanced limits are expected to speed up the decision making process for various activities in the major ports in general and for development works in particular,” he added
India has 12 major ports —Kandla, Mumbai, JNPT, Marmugao, New Managlore, Cochin, Chennai, Ennore, VO Chidambarnar, Visakhapatnam, Paradip and Kolkata (including Haldia) which handle approximately 61 per cent of the country’s cargo traffic. The Government has also scaled up work on 44 port projects worth Rs30,221 crore under public-private-partnership (PPP) mode. They have set themselves a two-year deadline for the completion of the works.
“Forty-four projects worth Rs30,220.78 crore are at different stages of completion under PPP mode in the ports sector,” said an official from the Ministry of Shipping. “The Government had taken up a total of 72 projects for the sector under PPP mode and of these 28 projects of Rs8,945.86 crore have been completed and about 44 should complete in the by mid next year,” he said.