Capacity of major ports to be enhanced in the 11th Plan

The capacity of the 12 major ports in the country will be enhanced to 1016 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) to cater to a projected traffic of 708 MTPA during the 11th Five-year Plan period of 2007-2012, at an estimated cost of Rs17,551.24 crore during the 5-year period.

Responding to a query in the Rajya Sabha minister of shipping, road transport and highways T R Baalu said major ports have identified projects covering the entire gamut of activities, namely, deepening of channels / berths, construction and reconstruction of berths / jetties, floating jetties, rail and road connectivity projects, procurement, upgradation and modernization of equipment and other demanding schemes in order to meet the capacity requirement.

Balu said the government has also put in place a scheme for private sector participation at major ports for handling bulk, break bulk and multi-purpose and specialised cargo, warehousing and public storage facilities, dry docking and ship repair facilities.

To make the project bankable, the government has addressed the concern of investors in the new model concession agreement (MCA). In addition, all the 12 major ports have formulated Port Business Plan, with a 20 years perspective as well as Action Plan for 7 years period with a view to transforming them into ports with world class facilities suited to the requirement of future economy of India.

The government has provided a gross budgetary support of Rs2,056.98 crore and private sector investment is anticipated to the tune of Rs.36,868.24 crore.

Balu also said that the government had issued guidelines for upfront tariff for public private partnership (PPP) projects at major port trusts and the tariff authority for major ports (TAMP) would fix tariff caps for handling various commodities or providing various services by private operators licensed by these ports under the provisions of the Major Port Trusts Act.

Once tariff caps are set for handling different commodities or providing various services for a port, they would apply to all terminals that are bid out subsequently in the same port during the next five years for handling identical commodity or for providing similar services.

For fixing up upfront tariff, TAMP would follow normative cost based approach and tariff caps are indexed to the variation in wholesale price index in the manner provided in the guidelines.