That the economy is growing is good news, but it is in the process of choking the gateways to trade. Quite literally. Five of the 12 major ports in India handle cargo, which is more than the installed capacity. What’s more, another three are on the brink of being clogged. This means that more than half of the major ports are under capacity constraint. The constraint comes despite the ports adding 58 million tonne (mt) capacity, as against the planned 34.14 mt addition during the year.
According to the figures from the Department of Shipping, the ports where cargo is spilling over include Haldia (near Kolkata), Jawahar Lal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), Mumbai port, Murmagao and Visakhapatnam. On the other hand, ports like Chennai, Kandla and Kolkata Dock Complex have below 2 mt of spare capacity.
The constraint means ports may face a repeat of the congestion nightmare that JNPT port in Mumbai faced in 2003.
Things may be slightly better this year, looking at the planned additions for 2006-07. The department expects to be comfortably placed as far as JNPT and Chennai is concerned. A capacity addition of 15 mt and 5.35 mt is expected for the respective ports in 2006-07.
Mumbai port may come as a surprise for officials, as the traffic has already starting spilling over but no additions have been planned for it during the next two years. For Mumbai, Murmagao and Kandla, the ministry will have to revise its targets for capacity addition as traffic has already crossed the planned capacity for the end of this year. The department will also have to ensure that the planned additions come through. For instance, instead of planned 15 mt, only 1mt was added at Kandla last year.
Targets will need closer scrutiny for Haldia Dock Complex, where a 3 mt capacity addition has been planned when the growth has been by more than 4 mt for two years in a row. It’s the same story for Visakhapatnam, where the average traffic growth for past two years was nearly 4 mt against planned addition of 3.5 million tonnes.
Businessworld by Vishaka Zadoo
This congestion comes despite the participation of private companies (Indian and foreign) in port operations. There are also several private companies in the shipping and container segments of the maritime trade—previously the Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) and the Container Corporation of India (Concor) dominated the market. But now the former has a strong rival in GE Shipping while the container freight and even container terminals on Indian ports are in private hands.
The cause of the congestion could be related to growing trade, customs bottlenecks or infrastructure shortcomings—the figures given above indicate this last as the most probable single cause. The evacuation of cargo from ports takes place with the rail, road and pipeline (for POL imports) network. Apart from these there are certain ports in Kerala where inland waterways along the coast permit yet another mode of cargo evacuation. To ease congestion at the Mumbai ports, which handle over 50% of India’s cargo, maritime links (i.e. coastal shipping) can be used to move containers to the ports in Gujarat.
The rail and road links around ports are being increasingly built in the PPP (public-private partnership) mode and under the BOT (build operate transfer) scheme. The existing roads are being upgraded to four-lanes while the rails will be double-tracked.While there are limited sections of roads around some ports that are privately built and owned (but open for use by others) the icing on the cake would be privatization of rail tracks and rail container transportation.
